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THE 


ROMANCE OF THE LILIES 


BY 

CHARLES HOWARD MONTAGUE 


AUTHOR OF 

“TWO STROKES OF THE BELL” 




5 3 

O > 
) *> > 


f) 


BOSTON 

W. I. HARRIS <& OO. 
24 Franklin Street 
1886 



Copyright, 1886, 

By CHARLES HOWARD MONTAGUE 


All rights reserved. 

Gift 

W. L. Shoemaker 

7 S '06 



Electrotyped and Printed by 
Alfred Mudge & Son, 24 Franklin Street. 


■■■■ 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I. 


Mr. Togg’s Substitute 

CHAPTER II. 

A Broken Lily .... 




CHAPTER III. 

All the Doors are shut . 


CHAPTER IV. 

The Price of a Little Pity . 


CHAPTER V. 

Mr. Togg deports Himself strangely . 


CHAPTER VI. 

The Miracle .... 

CHAPTER VII. 

Matlock’s Priend in London . 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Mr. Togg’s Reply 

CHAPTER IX. 


' 


PAGE 

5 

. 17 

. 27 

. 36 


48 

58 

67 

80 


Matlock comes back . 


[ 3 ] 


85 


4 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER X. 

The Child and the Man . 


PAGE 

. 97 


CHAPTER XI. 

The Kiss of Innocence 


. 112 


CHAPTER XII. 

Mr. Togo frightens Matlock 123 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Hiatus 135 


CHAPTER XIV. 

A Kecreant Suitor . 


CHAPTER XV. 


The Proxy 


CHAPTER XVI. 

Matlock is truly Alarmed 


. 148 


158 


. 168 


CHAPTER XVII. 

Yendelle explains Himself . 


174 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

Vendelle tells Everything . 


184 


CHAPTER XIX. 

Eighteen Years are as Nothing 


. 194 


CHAPTER XX. 


The Kiss of Love 


208 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER I. 

ME. TOGG’s SUBSTITUTE. 
LANTERN hanging in the arch of a 



gateway on a very dark night and a 
cheerful fire-light causing a glow in the win- 
dows of a corner room on the lower floor, distin- 
guished from the general blackness the house 
at Surfport which Leander Bathrow had inher- 
ited from his father. The broad expanse of 
the Atlantic separated Mr. Bathrow from his 
American home; Mrs. Bathrow, his young 
wife, feeling somewhat ill, had lain down in her 
chamber; Mrs. Togg, who had been house- 
keeper in the Bathrow family since the wife of 
the elder Bathrow died years and years before, 
had assumed a solicitous position at the bed- 
side of the wife of the younger Bathrow, — 
and so it happened that the only occupants of 
the lower part of the house were the youthful 


6 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


"Willard Matlock and that very uncommon 
genius, Mr. Togg. 

The whole rugged coast of Maine that night 
from Portsmouth to the Bay of Fundy was a 
line of unseen foam and a roar incessant that 
no darkness could belittle. The gale of the 
day had gone, and but for this constant tumult 
there would have been a hush upon the land. 
There was a pause in the proceedings of the 
elements and in that pause Nature held her 
breath. Young Matlock felt this impression 
of suspense in the uncanny night when he 
stepped to the door to see what the weather 
was. Near at hand in the silent landscape 
familiar objects presented vague, unmeaning 
shapes. The trees were marshalled, spectral 
and motionless, along the way. With start- 
ling distinctness he heard the ceaseless pound- 
ing of the waves against the shore a half-mile 
down the lonely road at his right. He turned 
his face towards the grim sky and something 
wet smote him on the cheek. And then a liv- 
ing screen trailed down across the murky 
background and waved its silent folds before 
him. Even while he looked the ground grew 
white where the light shone out from the hall 
at his back and about the solitary lantern that 
hung from the wooden arch above the gate in 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


7 


front of him sprung all at once into existence 
a fantastic tangle of flakes. 

When Matlock had shut the door and came 
back to the corner room, Mr. Togg, a tall, spare 
man of forty-five, with milky blue eyes and an 
habitual air of abstraction, was just lighting 
his pipe by the aid of an ember from the crack- 
ling fire in the wide chimney-place. He looked 
quite old and withered, even with the strong, 
ruddy light from the fire imparting a fictitious 
glow to his hollow cheeks, and his hand w r as 
unsteady. There was a disregard of appear- 
ances in his dress which Matlock knew arose 
not so much from the knowledge that he 
was secure in the privacy of his own home as 
from a carelessness of what his neighbors 
thought of him. He had the inevitable char- 
acteristics of the man who has not mingled in 
society. Despite his professional character of 
undertaker for the surrounding country, Mat- 
lock knew that he had lived much the life of a 
recluse. Mr. Togg was of the class of unso- 
cial, self-secluded beings who are alone in the 
midst of a crowd. His heart was not with his 
calling. He was ever dabbling in some un- 
profitable or mysterious matter of an impracti- 
cal, experimental nature, and in the odd den 
which he called his wareroom were strangely 


8 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


intermingled the furnishings of chemistry and 
death. 

Young Mr. Matlock, who was indeed but 
eighteen years of age, held this odd character 
in much esteem and awe. He watched him 
now with a face which expressed not so much 
curiosity as a respectful and deferential in- 
terest. 

The dry lips puffed the smoke; the top of 
the pipe grew into a glow; Mr. Togg threw 
away the ember. He sat bent forward in his 
chair, round shouldered, awkward, looking at 
the fire. A gray cloud slowly rose up about 
his head. 

"Snowing?” said Mr. Togg, interroga- 
tively. 

" Snowing,” said Matlock, affirmatively. 

" Thought so,” said Mr. Togg. " Pact, 
knew so. In for it. Snow all night.” 

Mr. Togg carried his peculiarity into his 
speech. Beside the fact that he talked in 
an odd jerky fashion was the further fact 
that in his aversion to conversation he had 
systematically abbreviated his communica- 
tions until, in the course of time, by grad- 
ually getting rid of all superfluous words and 
syllables, he had achieved a triumph of brevity. 
For this reason Matlock was not a little startled 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


9 


to hear Mr. Togg inquiring about the weather 
ancl he very much feared that his unusual 
effort upon this topic had rendered him for the 
balance of the evening quite incapable of fur- 
ther utterance. Still, Matlock made an attempt 
to interest him. 

” I suppose Mr. Bathrow is anxiously wait- 
ing in London at the present time to hear from 
my father,” he said, reflectively. “ It is rather 
too bad that his business should carry him 
so far from his young wife at a time like 
this.” 

Mr. Togg was looking at the fire. 

"Naturally he feels very nervous,” Matlock 
went on, " though there doesn’t really seem to 
be any cause for it.” 

Mr. Togg shut his eyes. 

" It’s my opinion,” Matlock ventured further, 
" that a seafaring man does wrong to marry 
unless he has accumulated enough to stay at 
home, or is resolved to make a sailor of his 
wife.” 

Mr. Togg slowly opened a reflective eye upon 
the ceiling and closed it again. He seemed 
to be considering the proposition. This was 
encouragement. Matlock cast about him for a 
further stimulant to his dormant sociability. 
There was a moment of silence. The fire 


10 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


crackled in the chimney-place ; the great clock 
ticked in the hall; there was no other disturb- 
ance near at hand. In the profound cpiiet 
Matlock felt the dull presence even here, sub- 
dued but perfectly distinct, of the surf upon 
the rocks. There was a slight stirring of the 
sash in the window frame, as if the silent 
night had breathed upon it. Something of 
this ghostly breath wandered through the 
house, closing a distant door. All at once the 
pillar of smoke over Mr. Togg's head grew 
animated and swayed to and fro. Some of it 
floated in Matlock’s direction. The young 
man became aware then of a very peculiar 
odor, strong, penetrating and indescribable. 

"Why, Mr. Togg! ” he exclaimed, "this is 
not tobacco ! ” 

Mr. Togg slowly opened both eyes, looked 
at him with an expressionless face and uttered 
the explanatory word, — 

"Substitute.” 

" Not opium, I hope? ” Matlock ventured to 
say. 

" Opium in it,” was Mr. Togg’s reply. 

" You astonish me.” 

Mr. Togg vouchsafed a grim smile and was 
kind enough to explain further, — 

" New thing. Compounded it myself.” 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


11 


"Indeed! ” said Matlock, greatly interested. 
" Tell me about it — that is if it isn’t a secret. 
What's it for? Is it a medicine? What do 
you call it?” 

Mr. Togg drew in a great breath of smoke 
and let it flow out slowly between his lips. 
Then he said with unexpected suddenness, 
K Togg’s substitute,” and relapsed into silence. 

Matlock smiled. 

" It isn’t funny,” said Mr. Togg, curtly. 

Matlock became very grave. 

“If the effect is as curious as the odor,” he 
ventured, " it must be curious indeed.” 

"It is,” Mr. Togg condescended to say. 
"Disagreeable? ” 

" Oh, not at all ; only very peculiar. I sup- 
pose it is one of the substitutes for tobacco we 
have read about? Really it seems to me that 
here is a great field for an ingenious man to 
make a fortune. That tobacco is a rank poison 
everybody is agreed. If there could only be 
discovered something which should possess all 
the virtues and none of the objectionable qual- 
ities of tobacco, everybody might turn smoker 
and the virtuous crusade against the weed be 
happily abandoned.” 

Mr. Togg seemed much pleased. He took 
the pipe out of his mouth, carefully wiped the 


12 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


stem on the lining of his coat and passed it to 
Matlock with a brief invitation to — ” try it.” 
The young man found ” Togg’s substitute ” 
surprisingly agreeable. It was more mild than 
tobacco and left in the mouth a clean and 
pleasant taste. Matlock was favorably im- 
pressed with his introduction to the substitute 
and when he handed back the pipe he said so 
Mr. Toggwas clearly delighted and underwent 
a transient but surprising transformation. He 
became confidential. He took from his pocket 
a leathern pouch containing some crisp brown- 
ish granules which he cordially invited the 
young man to keep. Matlock accepted the 
gift, greatly flattered by this token of Mr. 
Togg’s esteem. Meanwhile the latter made 
an unusual effort and produced a speech. 

" Everything was all very well but how to 
make it burn. Got the compound theoreti- 
cally, but no burn. Worked at it, by spells, 
eight years. Got it to a science. Perhaps 
you could help introduce it. When go away 
take box with you. Let friends try it.” 

” And have you actually worked at it for 
eight years?” asked Matlock, admiringly. 

" More,” said Mr. Togg. 

" And never told anybody about what you 
were doing in the mean time, I dare say? ” 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 13 

" Not word,” said Mr. Togg with an odd 
chuckle. 

" It’s wonderful,” Matlock continued. " You 
have good ground to hope to make a fortune 
out of it.” 

" Great hopes,” said Mr. Togg with a deep 
breath. "Very great hopes. Get up trade- 
mark. Patent it. Sell like Jehu.” 

"I’m sure I hope so,” said Matlock, " and in- 
deed you have every reason to be encouraged. 
You have probably thoroughly tested it. What 
are its effects ? Is it a narcotic or a stimu- 
lant?” 

"Narcotic. Soothing. Effect good. Very 
good. But don’t smoke too much. Same 
caution as in everything. Eat too much, get 
dyspepsia. No argument against eating. Too 
much this might dull mind, impair functions, 
raise devil. Still, nothing inherently wrong 
about it.” 

Here Mr. Togg having preserved his balance 
on the pinnacle of speech for an unusual 
period, suddenly fell off and remained hope- 
lessly down for some time despite Matlock’s 
frequent endeavors to pull him up again. 
Gradually he resumed his view of the fire, 
which was getting into such a cheerful roar 
that it successfully obscured the feebler pres- 


14 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


ence of the greater tumult on the rocks with- 
out. Nevertheless this ominous undercurrent 
somehow continued to assert itself to Mat- 
lock’s consciousness like that other little tender, 
romantic undercurrent of sadness which was 
never absent from his mind. 

Suddenly Mr. Togg was seized with a con- 
vulsion. Matlock was alarmed and cried out, 
but Mr. Togg turned a contorted face toward 
him and quieted his fears with a brief expla- 
nation, — 

" Laughing.” 

" Oh ! ” said Matlock, much relieved. 

"Queer idea,” said Mr. Togg, with a per- 
fect inspiration of communicativeness. "Very 
queer idea. Suppose — suppose man had an 
enemy — man like me, chemist, had an enemy 
and wanted to be rid of him. Make friends 
with him. Get up some mixture like this and 
invite him to a pipe of peace. Smoke to- 
gether. Enemy enchanted. More solace. 
Each night sit side by side in chimney- 
place and smoke together. Chemist’s pipe 
remains the same; but enemy’s mixture more 
and more insidious. Enemy must smoke. 
Opium and all the rest. Habit. Fixed. Un- 
shakable. Then chemist says has discovered 
mixture to be poisonous. Warns enemy to 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


15 


leave off. Enemy can’t. Even when knows 
truth, he can’t. Head all gone. Mind com- 
pletely shattered. Finally death. Could the 
law make the chemist liable? ” 

Mr. Togg’s query was so abrupt and forci- 
ble, he entered with so much enthusiasm into 
the exposition of his " queer idea ” that Mat- 
lock actually recoiled. Mr. Togg sat bent 
toward him, holding his pipe between his 
fingers looking at him earnestly. 

" I should hope so,” exclaimed Matlock when 
he found words. "If not, it is time we had a 
new law.” 

"Just so,” said Mr. Togg shortly, replacing 
his pipe and returning at once to a contempla- 
tion of the fire. 

The reaction was a serious one. Matlock’s 
subsequent remarks fell on unheeding ears. 
Mr. Togg became more silent and more deaf 
than a sphinx. The smoke continued to roll 
up about his head and make miniature clouds 
along the ceiling. The air became thick with 
it. So much of it was certainly disagreeable, 
— more so than Matlock had imagined when 
he first met it. The peculiarity of odor seemed 
to grow stronger and to intensify till it made 
him quite faint. The premonitions of this 
sensation stole upon him by degrees, but the 


16 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


sensation itself came abruptly. He arose then 
to seek the clearer atmosphere across the hall, 
wondering whether that which had affected 
him was really the fumes of the substitute, a 
slight indisposition of his own, or merely his 
imagination. 


THE ROMANCE OF THE T^.IES. 


17 


CHAPTER IT. 

A BROKEN LILY. 

W HEN the youthful Willard Matlock had 
left Mr. Togg, had crossed the hall and 
come into the dim and chilly room beyond, he 
paused perchance at the front window and stood 
a long time looking out upon the tangle of 
flakes, through which the lantern, hanging in the 
arch of the gateway, seemed a shapeless lumi- 
nary. There was nothing alluring in this 
finite prospect to make him gaze so long. He 
saw something more than the lantern gleaming 
through the snow. His imagination projected 
a transparent picture upon that mazy back- 
ground and he beheld a sweet and charming 
face. It was a common hallucination with him 
and one which he had made but feeble effort 
to overcome. 

Very young men of certain temperament are 
reputed to be prone to fall in love with women 
older than themselves. Whether Matlock be- 
longed to tliis romantic fellowship or not, 
2 


18 the romance of the lilies. 

whether he had really loved or really believed 
himself to have loved is of slight concern to us. 
It is certain that he had his romance, that its 
object was older than himself and that his im- 
pressionable and ardent nature had clung to it 
for many months. He was older and graver, 
far more serious and perhaps a great deal less 
shallow than the many are at his age. It was 
already nearly two years since this romance had 
come into his life and he was still haunted by 
its winsome presence. A lithe, graceful figure, 
great blue eyes, fair hair, a face of surpassing- 
beauty! For its own sake this phantom of 
delight awoke in him a glow of pleasure. For 
the sake of her who first stamped the image 
on his brain it made him melancholy, sick at 
heart. 

Hot that he knew very much about the origi- 
nal. He had not seen her a dozen times. He 
had scarcely spoken to her. It was improb- 
able that he ever should see her again ; impos- 
sible that he should speak to her. She had 
vanished out of his life ; out of all lives of 
good repute. It was the vision of her beauty 
he sought to persuade himself that he cher- 
ished. Nothing more. 

There were peculiar reasons why he should 
think of Madeline Perham now and here. He 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


19 


was at Surfport, and Surfport and the lost Lily 
were inseparable in his mind. It was here 
that he had met her and only here, and there 
was just that difference between Surfport 
bathed in a glory of summer light and verdure 
and Surfport bare and bleak beneath a gray 
winter sky that there should have been to be 
consistent with his emotions on returning to 
the town again after what had happened. 

There was something so superlatively incred- 
ible in the story of this fall that he had found 
it almost impossible to believe it. He had 
clung to the hope that it might be untrue long 
after everybody else had accepted it as a sad 
proof that even the angels are fallible ; he was 
still loath to surrender that vision of beauty to 
the hateful monster which they told him had 
claimed the reality ; even when there seemed 
no longer any room for doubt he continued 
to cherish in his heart the fond impression of 
a personality which had made the grief and 
scandal of a worthy community. He was not 
sure that this was right. He was not sure that 
it was consistent with his instincts, his beliefs 
and his aspirations, but he felt that he was 
powerless to change it. 

There was a melancholy fascination in a 
retrospect of all that he had known of her. 


20 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


And now again, to-night, he allowed himself 
to live over that brief portion of his past in 
which she figured. He left the window and 
began to pace the floor, his hands behind 
him, lost in recollection. He remembered 
that the young wife who was soon to be a 
mother, the wife of his father’s friend, Captain 
Bathrow, in whose house he now was, had 
been her schoolmate, that he had first heard 
of her through the captain who talked of her 
as one of the attractions of Surfport when he 
had pictured to Matlock’s youthful imagination 
the charms of his native town in order to in- 
duce him to spend his summer vacation at the 
old homestead. The "Lily of the Valley” he 
said the townsfolk called her. Young Matlock 
did not wonder at the name when he saw her. 
He was very young, barely sixteen, and she 
was a year or two his senior, lie remembered 
to have seen her first toward evening upon the 
rocks with the last glow of sunlight shimmer- 
ing in her hair, the soft breath from the lazy 
gray sea fluttering the blue ribbons which she 
wore and filling the folds of the raiment about 
her dainty figure with a wanton motion. Fair 
hair, great blue eyes, a face of surpassing 
beauty ! Was it any wonder that his fancy 
had idealized this vision and that it should 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


21 


haunt him afterwards ; that it should make of 
this human prose a poem ? Was it necessary 
for him to admit that he loved her in order to 
account for the place she still occupied in his 
thoughts ? He thought not. He was very 
sure not. 

He had met her again, here and there, at 
little social gatherings in the town. He had 
gone through the formality of an introduc- 
tion, had spoken to her and had even imagined 
that he saw breaking through the enamel of 
her reserve the latent inner spirit of the co- 
quette. He thought her all the more charming 
for that, no doubt. 

The brief summer sung itself away to the 
music of the waves. The time came for him 
to go. He may have had foolish thoughts. 
Undoubtedly he did. But he feared to utter 
them lest she should laugh at him. They 
parted with mutual expressions of regret and 
hope that they should soon meet again; very 
sincere hopes on his part ; who shall say how 
much she felt and thought? 

Long before the time when in the natural 
course of events they might have met again 
his angel had taken wings unto itself and 
had flown away. The real romance was de- 
stroyed, but in its place there came an ideal 


22 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


one upon which fell the magic mantle that the 
old possessed. When Madeline Perham dis- 
appeared her place was taken by a vision of 
her loveliness, a fair face, a lingering regret, a 
melancholy recollection, a sudden mistrust in 
humanity. 

He thought these thoughts now intending 
to be truthful with himself, but yet he knew 
that he had never sounded the mystery of the 
sentiment that had taken possession of him. 
You may better do that for him when you 
have heard his tale. 

The Perhams were proud people. The 
father was stern, harsh, uncompromising, Puri- 
tanic. The mother of the girl, a sweet woman, 
had long been dead. The second wife was 
like the husband. If I were writing a defence 
of the broken Lily I might say that this home 
was severe and unattractive. There is no 
reason why I should plead where man is not 
the judge. The outraged home did not for- 
give Madeline Perham. It never has forgiven 
her to this day while much that was then which 
might seem harder than a father’s heart has 
been washed down into the inevitable dust and 
taken to itself new forms. 

This was the winter after the second sum- 
mer. Duty had taken Mr. Bathrow far from 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


23 


the side of his young wife. His ship lay in 
the port of London. He had telegraphed to 
Matlock’s father in Hew York to go to Surf- 
port and secure for him his wife’s signature to 
certain important legal papers. The elder 
Matlock, full of the press of business, had 
sent his son in his place. Young Matlock had 
done everything that he had come to do and 
would return on the morrow. 

Undoubtedly it was the associations that this 
quaint place suggested which made the rem- 
iniscences that came to him to-night so much 
more vivid than usual. It was here that he 
had met her. The sullen roar which found its 
way into the house came from the very rocks 
where he had seen her first. If he went out 
beneath the solitary lantern blurred by the 
silent storm, turned to his left along the white 
road, less than an hour’s trudging through 
snow would take him past the dark house with 
closed blinds and air of desolation which 
had been her home; past the door that was 
shut against her and would never, never open 
to her again. He knew just how it would look 
for he had seen it not many hours ago. That 
house had an expression like a human face. 
There are many things about this period of his 
life with which memory has ceased to busy 


24 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


herself. That desolate habitation is not one 
of those things. As he saw it, grim and un- 
forgiving, on that quiet winter day, he sees it 
still. 

Matlock grew tired of pacing the obscure 
chamber. Mr. Togg’s substitute, like some 
other simple-seeming agents, was perhaps 
more powerful than it appeared. I am not 
sure that the new compound had anything to 
do with it or that the effect of the peculiar 
fumes which had turned him faint in the other 
room had not by this time wholly departed. 
The young man sank down for a moment, — 
he was sure it was but for a moment, — in a 
chair by the window. 

There came in front of him, all at once, a 
face and figure that he knew too well, — the 
fair hair, the great blue eyes, the face of sur- 
passing beauty ! — but oh ! so changed ! so mis- 
erable, with such a hunted expression! She 
saw him. She stretched out her arms toward 
him as if she would appeal to him for one 
kind word. He started. He felt very cold. He 
had been asleep. He had sat there but the 
briefest item of time, but he must have slept. 
His limbs were stiff. With a strange confusion 
he stood upon his feet. Out of the window at 
his side he saw the luminous beacon through 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


25 


the tangle of snow and underneath it some- 
. tiling dark, stirring vaguely. He watched it 
curiously but it came no nearer. He went to 
the door. It took fright and disappeared. 
Bareheaded, he plunged recklessly down into 
the blinding whirl; he took a dozen steps, 
caught the fleeing creature in his arms, turned 
its face to his — it was she. 

She cried out, entreating him to let her go. 
He could not have held her if he had wished. 
His arms dropped away from her. They stood 
while the soft snow-flakes circled about them 
and the water boomed upon the distant rocks 
and the dull light shone obscurely — oh, not 
too obscurely for either her or him ! — and 
stared each into the other’s face. 

” What are you doing here, in this storm? ” 

She would not, or could not, answer him. 
She made a vague gesture with her arm up the 
road toward the home that had been hers. 

” Have you been there? ” 

Then she found words to make reply. Her 
voice was cold, unemotional. 

" I have been there. They would not let 
me in.” 

" Where are you going?” 

Again she made a vague gesture with her 
arm, this time toward the din incessant which 


26 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


filled all the silent valley in which they stood, 
— that hollow between the hills whose pride, 
whose fairest flower had borne this face and 
image. 

A hot flood of emotion choked him. He 
hardly knew what he did. He pointed to 
the cheerful light which streamed forth from 
the open door. 

"In there, there is a fire,” he said. 

"Whether she would have gone of her own 
accord I cannot say. She staggered and sank 
down in the snow. When Matlock had lifted 
her in his arms, as one would lift a child, he 
saw that she was no longer conscious. 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


27 


CHAPTER III. 

ALL THE DOOES ARE SHUT. 

W HETS’ young Mr. Matlock had placed the 
broken Lily in the comfortable chair by 
the fire, vacated without a murmur by the aston- 
ished Mr. Togg, and had seen her slowly reviv- 
ing under the influence of the grateful warmth 
from the merry logs he, with natural delicacy, 
prepared to retire from the room and call Mrs. 
Togg. Mrs. Togg was a very worthy woman 
who seemed to have been created for the com- 
plementary purpose of supplying the deficien- 
cies in Mr. Togg. Taken collectively the two 
ought to have produced one tolerably satis- 
factory individual, but unfortunately like so 
much oil and water confined in one vessel the 
union, though sometimes apparent, was never 
real. One element of the compound was al- 
ways on top, and notwithstanding a puzzling 
conflict of opinion upon this topic the prevail- 
ing impression seemed to be that that one was 
Mrs. Togg. It may have been that in a con- 


28 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


stant association of half a lifetime a certain 
absorptive and compensatory process had 
gone on between them. There was still a tra- 
dition to the effect that Mr. Togg in his youth 
had been something of a talker and it was just 
as certain that Mrs. Togg, in her present ad- 
vanced period of life, was possessed of fully 
double her fair proportion of loquacity. 

But on this particular occasion a virtuous 
indignation came as near to producing a mira- 
cle of speechlessness as was ever likely to be 
vouchsafed in her case. Her sharp little eyes 
comprehended the situation at a glance. She 
threw up her startled arms, gasped and fled to 
a position of safety on the staircase. Here 
she visibly expanded Avith the consciousness of 
a flagrant insult. 

"This is Togg’s work! ” she ejaculated. 

Mr. Togg in his nervousness at this unex- 
pected accusation hopelessly shattered his pre- 
cious pipe. 

"If there is any fault it is mine,’’ began 
Matlock. 

"Don’t tell me it ain’t Togg’s work,” said 
the quivering lady on the staircase. " I know 
it. I’m positive of it. You may be leagued 
with him. I don’t know. If you be, I’m very 
sorry for you. I’m sure I can’t say what will 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


29 


come of it; but whatever does, nobody shall 
ever accuse me of having aided, abetted or 
equivocated in any way. I clear my skirts of 
the whole business and baggage. Above stairs 
I go and above stairs do I remain till the 
house is rid of the scandal. It’s not my house. 
I can’t say one word. But mercy on us if 
Bathrow ever finds it out ! ” 

Mrs. Togg could not sustain herself under 
the thought of the consequences of this fearful 
possibility. She sat down on the stairs and 
looked with a face of unutterable horror upon 
the opposite wall as if she saw the awful 
countenance of the husband of her mistress 
there. She rose again as suddenly as she had 
subsided. 

" I’ve kept house for Bathrow for twenty 
years,” she said with solemnity, "and this is 
the first time I ever was insulted.” 

An upper door closing with a crash and, 
immediately after, the rattling of the bolt 
that secured it, formed the dramatic climax of 
the little scene upon the staircase. Mr. Togg 
and young Mr. Matlock looked at each other 
in silent consternation. 

A feeble voice from the arm-chair startled 
them. 

" They don’t want me here. All the doors 


30 


THE KOMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


are shut. All the doors are shut. They don’t 
want me. I must go away somewhere. I 
must go away.” 

She half started from her chair, but seemed 
unequal to the effort of arising. Matlock 
approached her, diffident but anxious. It was 
a face of terrible pallor and hollowness that 
she turned upon him. Her eyes burned brill- 
iantly, like the eyes of hunger or insanity. 
He wondered how he had recognized her in 
the darkness. Did she know him? She fixed 
her glowing gaze upon his features with a 
strange look of fear. 

"The door is shut,” she murmured again. 
" All the doors are shut.” 

Matlock stared at her in growing conster- 
nation. He looked from her face to the face 
of Mr. Togg. Mr. Togg placed his lank fore- 
finger on his wrinkled forehead. Matlock 
shrank hack. 

" Old Perham’s work,” muttered Mr. Togg. 
"Never half decent. Wouldn’t treat dog like 
that.” 

An expression of terror darted, all at once, 
into the girl’s face. 

"Who spoke?” she demanded, in an intense 
undertone. " Who spoke ? ” 

" Only me,” said Mr. Togg, his rough way 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


31 


somehow seeming to melt. "You needn’t 
fear me, girl.” 

She saw Mr. Togg, but her nervous glance 
passed him over as if she were looking for 
somebody behind him. She turned in her 
chair as well as she was able, and searched in 
all the corners of the room for something that 
she did not find. 

" That was liis voice,” she said beneath her 
breath. " He is going to kill me. I heard 
him say so.” 

Her thoughts suddenly stimulated her into 
a quiver of terror. She looked at Matlock 
appealingly, crying out: 

" You won't let him kill me, will you? You 
will stay close beside me, won’t you ? ” 

The young man shivered. 

"Nobody wants to hurt you,” he said. 
" There is nothing to be afraid of.” 

She replied almost angrily : " I tell you there 
is. He wants to kill me. He will kill me yet. 
He told me so. I ran away from him, but he 
has followed me. I know he has. He always 
follows me. Nowhere, nowdiere I can go that 
he will not follow me, — except one place and 
there the door is shut. All doors are shut.” 

Her sudden return to this despairing utter- 
ance, which sounded like a wail from perdition 


32 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


itself, utterly unstrung the young man’s nerves. 
There was a dead silence and then he said : 

" Perhaps the doors may open again.” 

" Never,” she answered sombrely, " never.” 

Matlock bowed his head. He Avas aroused 
by a touch upon his arm. Mr. Togg was 
looking at him seriously. He whispered two 
words : 

"Hr. Motley.” 

The young man felt a gleam of hope and 
wondered why he had not thought of this 
before. The physician lived a mile up the 
road. It was something of an undertaking to 
reach him on a night like this, but he resolved 
to do so with the least possible delay. 

" You will stay with her while I am away,” 
he said, anxiously. " She is afraid, however 
unreasonably, of being left alone. It is an 
act of common humanity to humor her. See 
how pale she is. She must be seriously ill. 
I am afraid the case is hopeless.” 

" Much my mind,” agreed Mr. Togg. " Do 
all I can. Won’t leave the room. Be quick.” 

Matlock hurried on his great-coat and fur 
cap and plunged out into the storm, closing 
the door behind him. He could not resist the 
impulse that came over him at the gate to 
assure himself that he was leaving everything 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


33 


as it should be left. He turned and walked 
through the snow to the window and looked 
in. He saw Madeline Perham still sitting in 
the great chair at one corner of the chimney- 
place and Mr. Togg sitting, grim and silent, 
at the other. The girl seemed to have fallen 
into a doze for her head drooped like a lily 
on its stem. The old man was watching her 
with an intensity that caused his head to 
tremble. The door which led into the hall 
was shut. Matlock was satisfied and came 
away. 

He took the open road and began to run. 
The snow blinded him and now and again he 
stumbled, but he kept resolutely on, the clamor 
on the rocks behind him following him with 
unabated distinctness till a sudden bend in the 
highway about the base of a hill made it 
dwindle to the crooning of a lullaby by a 
voice far away. 

The physician was not at home and an un- 
avoidable delay ensued. Matlock, however, 
succeeded in finding him at a neighbor’s and 
they proceeded at once to the stable from 
which they both emerged after a brief delay 
drawn by an animal that was celebrated the 
country round for her disdain of distance. 
As they rattled out into the road the snow 

3 


34 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


ceased almost as abruptly as it had begun 
three hours ago. There had not been a very 
heavy fall, hardly enough to muffle the grating 
of the wheels on the gravel. They turned 
the base of the hill and sped on toward the 
snug house behind the rocks. Even above 
the steady noise of the moving vehicle the 
clamor on the shore in front of them burst 
out again with renewed triumph when the hill 
was passed, and when at last the mare drew 
up, obedient to the doctor’s rein, before the 
lantern hanging in the arch of the gate, it 
filled all the air again with its incessant 
thunder. 

Matlock noticed as he went up the steps 
how curiously distinct the imprint of his feet 
in the snow leading from the gate to the little 
window still remained. The door yielded easier 
than it ought. It was not latched. The second 
door opening into the square corner room 
stood wide ajar. Mr. Togg was erect, holding 
to the back of his chair with an unsteady 
hand. His head was shaking worse than ever. 
He looked at Matlock and at the doctor as if 
their appearance confused him. The position 
of the chair in which Madeline Perham still 
sat was slightly changed. It had been moved 
about so that in lieu of facing the fire it faced 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


35 


the door. Apparently she had not stirred since 
Matlock had seen her last. Her graceful head 
still drooped against the back of the tall chair 
like a lily on its slender stem. But her great 
blue eyes were open. She was not asleep. 
Her lips moved. The doctor softly stepped 
forward, bent down his grave and solicitous 
face and listened. 

” The doors — the doors are open,” he heard 
her murmuring. 

The doctor paused a moment, straightened 
up, took out his watch and marked the time. 

” Gentlemen, under all the circumstances,” 
he said, " it may afford you some humane sat- 
isfaction to know that I have come too late. 
She is dead.” 


36 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER IY. 

THE PRICE OP A LITTLE PITT. 

" “F KNEW there’d be consequences. I said 
-S- so the minute I see her setting there,” cried 
Mrs. Togg. "Just the moment you begin to 
harbor these creatures the judgment descends 
upon you. Togg’s to blame for the whole of 
it. Don’t attempt to dispute that. What did 
I tell you? But no, you wouldn’t hear a word. 
I might as well have saved my breath. Mercy 
on us all if Leander Bathrow ever finds it out. 
That’s all I say.” 

Young Willard Matlock felt vaguely uncom- 
fortable. What the worthy housekeeper said 
was based on an unfortunate fact. The house 
was not his. The necessity of doing what 
he did had seemed so plain, the possibility 
of doing anything else so horribly inhuman 
that he had looked upon his action as a matter 
of course. He began to see dimly how harm 
might come of it. But could he blame him- 
self? The unutterable woe and solemnity of 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


37 


the scene had made a powerful impression on 
his young heart. All the romantic tenderness 
which he had felt for the beautiful face of his 
dreams which was so soon ’ to he but a dream 
indeed, was as nothing beside the overwhphn- 
ing sense of compassionate distress that now 
burned in him. He experienced when Mrs. 
Togg spoke the natural indignation which boils 
up in humanity at the sight of indifference. 

" Would you deny her a place to die in? ” 
he demanded, in a voice that choked. 

" Oh, I know it’s very sad and all that,” said 
Mrs. Togg, nervously, " but we can’t hold our- 
selves accountable for the sins of others. It’s 
more’n some on us can do to look out for our 
own. I’m older than you be, Mr. Matlock, 
and I can see a deal farther. This person” 
(it was a great Christian concession on Mrs. 
Togg’s part, and she felt it so, to admit that 
the dead Madeline was a person) "this person, 
it shames me to say it, was the most intimate 
friend Mrs. Bathrow had in the wide world 
three years hack; and when I think of it all 
happening like this here under this roof 
and Bathrow away and me here alone, — for 
what’s Togg in a time like this? — and her 
in her present condition I'm that faint I 
wonder I don’t drop through the floor.’’ And 


38 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


Mrs. Togg had every appearance of meaning 
what she said. 

" It is rather unfortunate,” said Dr. Motley, 
placing the slender dead hand across its neigh- 
bor on the silent bosom and coming away from 
the sofa where she lay like one asleep ; " it 
is rather unfortunate, all things considered. 
How please tell me the worst at once. What 
does Mrs. Bathrow know? ” 

" Why bless your soul ! ” cried Mrs. Togg, 
paling at the thought, " she don’t know no 
more about it than the bricks in the chimbly. 
And if she ever does find it out and Bathrow 
hears of it it’s my solemn opinion there’ll 
be a murder.” She looked ominously at Mr. 
Togg, whose face still wore its confused 
expression, as if she were fully persuaded 
that she should have no difficulty in naming 
the victim. 

" Then,” said the physician, authoritatively, 
” I shall have to leave it to your discretion to see 
that she is kept in ignorance. The truth would 
do her no good and might do her much harm. 
Meanwhile, with the assistance of my young 
friend here, I will see that the body is removed 
to-night. In the morning there will be no trace 
of the unfortunate event of this evening and 
all danger on that score will be averted.” 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


39 


" Martha ! ” called a soft voice outside the 
closed door. Martha was Mrs. Togg’s Chris- 
tian name. Every heart in the room doubled 
its beating at the sound of that voice. Every 
face assumed an expression of alarm. The 
mockery in the relation between the presence 
of the speaker and the words that the doctor 
had just uttered made itself felt with such un- 
expected abruptness, that everybody lost pres- 
ence of mind. Before any one moved to 
oppose it the door opened. There was a vision 
of a fair and delicate young woman, whose long 
hair fell unconfined about her shoulders, clad 
in a simple flowing garment of white, a hope- 
less cry of despair from Mrs. Togg — and Mrs. 
Bathrow had entered the room. Then the 
physician recovered from his momentary pa- 
ralysis, approached the table in two strides 
and blew out the light. But the glowing logs 
remained and filled the chamber with a dull 
red glare in which the people moved about 
like ghosts and strange shadows fell upon the 
walls. 

"Something has happened,” cried Mrs. 
Bathrow in quick fear. "Why are you all 
assembled in this room? Why is the doctor 
here? What made him blow out the light?” 

"Come away, dear. It’s nothing; just 


40 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


nothing at all,” Mrs. Togg assured her in tones 
which eloquently contradicted her words. 

"Yes, my dear, you had better go,” added 
the physician in his most persuasive manner. 

"You are keeping something from me ! 
Something dreadful ! ” exclaimed the young 
wife with redoubled terror. " Oh ! my hus- 
band ! It is he ! His ship was cast away ! 
They have brought him home — dead ! ” 

She broke away from the restraining arms 
and with unerring instinct knelt beside the 
sofa where the dead girl lay. At the first con- 
tact she drew back and remained silent. Dr. 
Motley gently approached her and endeavored 
to lift her up. She resisted him firmly. 

"Ho,” she said. "This concerns me. I 
must know.” Her voice had changed. She 
was breathless, but decided. 

"The mischief is done,” said the doctor, 
nervously. " Light the lamp.” 

The match spluttered; the wick caught, the 
light came blue, yellow, white, — and all was 
visible. 

Mrs. Bathrow half rose up, gazing upon the 
still face before her. 

"Oh! it’s Lena!” she cried, and quickly 
covering her face with her hands, burst into 
violent sobbing. 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


41 


K There ! there ! ” said the doctor, soothingly, 
" you know the worst. Now come away ! 
Do.” 

" No, no,” she pleaded, " don’t take me away. 
Let me stay beside her a little while. Oh, I 
know they say bad things about her, but they 
are not true; they can’t be true; I never could 
believe them. She was so good, so pure, so 
loving ! Oh, doctor ! ” — she turned her stream- 
ing eyes toward him, — " you don’t know what 
a good girl she was ! Why, I used to play with 
her when I could hardly walk. She was so 
beautiful, too, I envied her. And now to think 
that I should be here and she there, — like 
that.” There was something so solemn to Mrs. 
Bathrow’s mind in this that her sobs ceased ; 
she no longer wept for very awe. After a 
moment she spoke again. 

" Tell me everything. I can bear it. What 
made her die?” 

"Well, you see,” said Dr. Motley, hesitat- 
ingly, " she — wasn’t very strong — she — well, 
consumption. Safe enough to say consump- 
tion.” 

The young wife looked up into his face with 
a sad smile and said, reproachfully: 

" Do you think it would hurt me to tell me 
the truth?” 


42 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


The physician had some little trouble in 
clearing his throat but he finally found words. 

"Well, no. I think you are right, perhaps. 
You see, Mrs. Bathrow, it places me in an 
awkward position. I don’t want to distress 
you and I certainly don’t like to lie. If ever 
exhaustion of the nervous system and undue 
exposure without proper nourishment produced 
a collapse, this was such a case. 

Mrs. Bathrow did not answer. She looked 
for a little time upon the features of her old 
schoolmate; then, rising to her feet, she bent 
over and kissed the quiet face. 

" Dear old friend,” she said, — " dear old 
friend — good night! — And if God loves you 
half as well as I did you are no longer hun- 
gry.” 

To the electrification of everybody the 
sphinx-like Togg suddenly blurted out an in- 
ferential sentence, — "My religion — Alpha and 
Omega,” — after the delivery of which remark- 
able declaration he abruptly strode out of the 
room. 

Having seen with unutterable relief Mrs. 
Bathrow between Mrs. Togg and the physician 
led upstairs to her bedchamber, young Mr. 
Matlock, conscious that his own eyes had paid 
a tribute to his manhood, and somehow feeling 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


43 


as if some portion of the dreadful burden in 
his heart had been lifted by the scene through 
which he had just passed, prepared to follow 
them. As he crossed the hall somebody, step- 
ping out of the shadow, plucked him by the 
sleeve. 

"Say,” said Mr. Togg, "just a word. How 
long were you gone?” 

" Do you mean when I went for the doctor? ” 
queried Matlock, after a fruitless stare into the 
uncommunicative face. Mr. Togg jerked his 
head. 

" It must have been less than an hour,” said 
Matlock. 

" So the clock said,” muttered Mr. Togg, 
uneasily. 

" And wasn’t the clock right?” asked Mat- 
lock, wonderingly. 

"Beyond disputing; but it seemed like — 
like,” — Mr. Togg felt around for a word, — 
" nothing.” 

" You fell asleep,” said Matlock. 

" Didn’t know it,” returned Mr. Togg. 

" It must have been so,” said Matlock. 

"Well,” said Mr. Togg, becoming com- 
municative, "got to tell you. Queer thing. 
Very queer thing. Been gone five minutes. 
Maybe more. Girl hadn’t moved. Sudden 


44 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


she looked up to speak. She opened her 
mouth ” — 

Mr. Togg stopped. 

" Well,” said Matlock, feeling, he did not 
know why, an extreme uneasiness. 

"Well,” resumed Mr. Togg, shortly, "she 
never closed it.” 

"Pshaw!” said Matlock again, "you fell 
asleep.” 

" What turned the chair around? ” demanded 
Mr. Togg. " Think about it.” 

He turned at this and stumped off up the 
stairs. Matlock, bewildered, stood looking 
after him. As the undertaker passed the 
post at the head of the stairs the young man 
saw him still shaking his trembling old head 
and heard him muttering, " Can’t understand 
it. Can’t understand it. Beyond me.” 

Left alone, Matlock hesitated. The house 
was still, except for the faint murmur of voices 
on the floor above. The solemn din of the 
water on the rocks had supreme sway now. 
He was unobserved. Softly he opened the 
door and went back into the dim chamber. 
The lamp burned feebly on the table. He 
approached the stricken Lily, knelt down and 
looked steadily into the face that had haunted 
him so long. At first his tears blinded him 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


45 


but after a little he saw more clearly. Had a 
change come into that face? Surely there 
was something lacking. The dead face was 
not the face in his heart. He rose almost with 
a cry of relief. He could not make them 
seem identical — these two. And yet they 
were so very like! Could he ever have seen 
another face which resembled this? He knew 
he never had. It was so impossible as to he 
absurd. 

And yet for some strange reason in his 
dreams that night he saw the fair face in the 
vision of his romance smile with a sweeter radi- 
ance than before and felt her more than ever 
a potent and a living force. 

Morning came. Ashamed that he should 
have slept at all after such a night the young 
man woke. The weight and the oppression 
came back upon his heart again. A brief epi- 
sode, seemingly trivial, but of tremendous im- 
port for all the future, made him, for a time, 
forget his bitterness. He had not finished 
dressing when he heard an outcry that filled 
him with dismay. It was the voice of Mrs. 
Togg lifted up in one awful, superhuman wail. 
Matlock ran into the entry and met her, trem- 
bling and screaming, and holding to the stair- 
post for support. 


46 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


"Mrs. Togg! Mrs. Togg!” he exclaimed. 
"What has happened?” 

"I told you what would come of it! I told 
you ! ” shrieked the frantic housekeeper. " It’s 
happened! The judgment is on us! She’s 
gone.” 

"Who?” gasped Matlock. 

"Mrs. Bathrow! Mrs. Bathrow! She riz 
up out of her bed in the night and went, — 
just like an angel, — she went!” 

" Not dead! ” said the young man in horror. 

" Heaven forbid ! ” cried Mrs. Togg. " But 
none on us knows. She ain’t to be found 
nowhere. She’s disappeared.” 

Matlock cast one glance into the empty 
chamber and rushed down stairs. There was 
no cause for alarm. Mrs. Bathrow sat by the 
side of the dead girl in the parlor. She had 
drawn the table to the sofa and the lamp still 
burned upon it. She held one of the dainty 
cold hands in hers and when the young man 
found her she was looking into the face of 
her old playmate with sad earnestness of 
expression to which the faint smile upon 
her lips lent an added strangeness. She did 
not perceive Matlock’s approach until he 
touched her and then she started and changed 
in an instant. She began to tremble and 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


47 


looked at him with a constrained and troubled 
gaze. 

Mrs. Togg hobbled in immediately after, and 
with her assistance, Matlock carried the young 
wife up the stairs and placed her in her bed. 
For weeks she lay there, taking no note of 
time and but little interest in life, her eyes 
turned toward the window through which she 
looked out far across the glittering sea. 


48 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER Y. 


MR. TOGG DEPORTS HIMSELE STRANGELY. 

HERE is a vast difference between mere 



-fi- taciturnity and downright sepulchral 
gloom, but in the space of a few hours Mr. 
Togg had spanned it. He went upstairs in a 
state of uneasy perplexity, the night that Made- 
line Perham died. He came down, the morn- 
ing after, in a state of nervous dejection which 
soon merged into one of absolute terror and 
despair. What he endured he made futile at- 
tempts to conceal. Everybody in the little 
household was in so much the same condition 
that morning that Mr. Togg’s mysterious mal- 
ady at first escaped attention or was attributed 
to the common cause. Mrs. Bathrow was 
prostrated, Mrs. Togg in expectation of mo- 
mentarily reaching the same crisis and young 
Matlock so wrapped in his own sad thoughts 
that he had little room for comment upon the 
condition of others. 

It is not remembered that Mr. Togg spoke 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


49 


at all during the entire day, even in answer to 
direct questions, except once and that was in 
the morning. At an early hour Dr. Motley 
came down and had a brief conference with 
Matlock in Mr. Togg’s presence. When he 
had gone Mr. Togg said to the young man: 

"After the doctor the undertaker. If ever 
hated the business, it’s now. If wouldn’t 
make trouble, I’d draw out.” 

It was then for the first time that Matlock 
observed what a change had come over him. 

The unaccountable symptoms deepened so 
rapidly that the physician, when he came again 
later in the day, remarked them and said to 
Matlock that he had never known Mr. Togg 
to behave so queerly. Even Mrs. Togg noted 
the facts and began, as she expressed it, " to 
worry.” 

"I knew Togg was obstinate,” she com- 
plained in the presence of her oblivious lord, 
" but I didn’t know he would carry his obsti- 
nacy that far to frighten everybody out of their 
senses by his oddities at a time like this.” 

It was quite evident that Mr. Togg was 
suffering. Several times in the presence of 
others he was taken with a fit of trembling 
which rendered support a necessity. His nat- 
urally sallow countenance assumed a sickly 

4 


50 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


pallor. He could eat nothing, though he tried, 
painfully tried, to divert attention from himself 
by proceeding with a repast that choked him. 
At times he was evidently keenly aware that 
his manner was exciting attention and it was 
equally apparent that this was a source of an- 
noyance to him which he would have been 
glad to end by an affectation of his ordinary 
stolidity. But an occasional attempt to steady 
himself by sudden clutches at substantial ob- 
jects when he seemed about to fall, a constant 
recurrence of his fits of trembling and an 
unnatural way of starting at trivial sounds 
combined to produce an impression which no 
subsequent efforts could efface. From an 
exclusive sense of his own -misery Matlock 
gradually came to divide his grief with a mel- 
ancholy interest in Mr. Togg. 

None the less, the events of the day were 
such as to increase his bitterness, and fire his 
indignation. The physician called upon Mr. 
Perham and had an interview which he indig- 
nantly declined to repeat. The result was 
that the dead Madeline might have been buried 
without a funeral if Mrs. Bathrow had not 
insisted that she should be accorded that Chris- 
tian rite in the house where she had found a 
tardy shelter. 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


51 


The days and nights were very long. Young 
Matlock could scarcely stay in-doors. He 
walked about staring at familiar objects with 
an intense gaze which did not see. He spent 
many hours on the rocks watching the cruel 
waves breaking upon the shore and looking 
out across the pitiless ocean, with its icy in- 
hospitable wind. At night he looked up into 
the measureless void where the stars seemed 
to twinkle and felt the overwhelming impres- 
sion of limitless space as he had never felt it 
before. He wondered if Madeline Perham 
had ever looked out there and felt what it was 
to be alone. For there was nothing to his 
mind so awful as the sense of solitude and lit- 
tleness that came of imagining himself to be 
dropped into the midst of that eternity of noth- 
ingness. He was not a poet; he was not 
aware of being a metaphysician, and he never 
stopped to see how the connection arose, but 
in his thought there was a connection between 
that sense of solitude and the girl who lay 
dead: it came nearer to producing a similar 
feeling in him than anything else in his ex- 
perience. 

As the time of the funeral drew near Mat- 
lock wondered whether all the village would 
keep away. If he thought they would, he 


52 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


was mistaken. The little parlors were 
crowded, and the minister made one of his 
most effective addresses. There was a great 
press around the plain casket and a smaller, 
but still respectable, press at the grave. One 
of the men who stood in the cemetery Mat- 
lock knew did not lead an unsullied life. But 
the men did not object to his being there and 
the women smiled upon him. 

When the young man heard the sound of 
the earth falling upon the wooden box which 
enclosed the fairest sight that he had ever seen 
he came away and walked by himself to the 
house. He ground his teeth, when he thought 
of her father and began to have a faint sus- 
picion in his heart that there were some things 
about the social ways of the world to which he 
never should subscribe. I bear him witness 
of this fact; he never has. 

He reached home before nightfall. It was 
just between daylight and dark when Mr. Togg 
came up the clean-swept gravel path that led 
to the front door. Matlock was looking from 
the front window and observed how like an 
old man he walked. He did not come in, as 
Matlock expected, when he heard him ascend- 
ing the steps. On the contrary, he paused at 
the door, slowly went back again, and stood 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


53 


holding to the gate, looking down the road 
toward the sea. There was something more 
in the indescribable details of this gaze than 
in the mere fact of it, that fastened the 
young man’s attention and aroused his wonder. 
After a few moments at the gate Mr. Togg 
turned and went through the snow around by 
the side path to the rear door that communi- 
cated with his wareroom and laboratory. 

Shortly after, Mrs. Togg came into the room 
where Matlock was, very much disturbed. 

" I can’t say what’s the matter with Togg,” 
she said breathlessly. " He ain’t himself, not a 
bit. I’ve known him as long as any one and 
I thought I’d seen about all his uncommon 
ways, but I never knew him to carry on the 
way he’s bin carrying on for the last few 
days in all my life. He was out there rattling 
around in the shed and I went and spoke to 
him as innocent as could be and he turned on 
me and cried out a lot of nonsense about my 
being the death of him and locked the door 
in my face. I’m afraid he must be sick. He 
ain’t eat nothing to speak of. I’m sure I 
don’t want to be the death of him. I’m sure 
you’ll bear me out, Mr. Willard, I’ve tried 
to do my duty as a Christian woman by that 
man. If I could do any more with all that 


54 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


1 have to pester me, I’d like to know what 
it is.” 

Matlock had not had time to answer this 
puzzling appeal when he saw in the obscurity 
a form which looked like Mr. Togg passing 
the window. As the figure went under the 
lantern at the gate the young man knew that 
it was indeed Mr. Togg and that he had on an 
old cape-shaped overcoat, beneath which he 
seemed to carry a bundle of some size. He 
was walking rapidly and he took the road 
toward the sea. 

Matlock got his hat and followed him. The 
idea really came to him that the old man might 
be laboring under a temporary fit of insanity. 
What other theory, indeed, could explain his 
conduct of the last few days? He tried to 
watch him without being seen. If he Avas 
wrong, he certainly had no right to intrude 
upon him and he would only follow him to 
see that no harm came. 

When it neared the sea the road suddenly 
turned to the right and followed the course of 
the coast at an equidistance from the shore. 
Mr. Togg did not turn with the road, but after 
looking carefully behind him, — a rather fruit- 
less precaution for his vision was very limited 
even at the best, and it was already dusk, — 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


55 


kept on down over the rocks. In the direc- 
tion of the land all was gray and gloomy. 
The sky was a pall. But on the line of the 
troubled sea the edges of the clouds were 
tinted with a faint light. Matlock dimly saw 
the tall figure moving before him. "Why was 
he going straight down to the boiling surf? 
A sudden suspicion that the purpose which the 
old man had before him was self-destruction 
nerved Matlock to hurry forward with all his 
strength. But the way was rough indeed. 
In his haste he fell and rose only in time to 
see Mr. Togg disappear around the base of an 
enormous rock. It was the very rock on 
which he had first seen Madeline Perham on 
the golden summer day which seemed so long 
ago. It was a massive giant of gray, so high 
that it could be seen far up the road and so 
amply flat atop that it was known the country 
round as table rock. This flat top in one part 
bulged out so far over the moving element 
beneath that the line of foam and roar was 
invisible to him who even leant out over the 
dizzy shelf. The water was terribly deep just 
here, as Matlock knew by hearsay. A flight 
of natural steps made the plateau easily acces- 
sible from below. 

It was up this flight of natural steps that Mr. 


56 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


Togg had taken his way. Here, a moment 
after, Matlock, breathless and panting, came, 
scrambling, using all his limbs, and endeavoring 
to call out, but unable to command a voice. 
When he reached the top he saw Mr. Togg well 
defined against the sky, standing near the fatal 
edge, and swinging a heavy bundle in his arms. 
The young man mistook the purpose of the 
action and screamed out: 

"Mr. Togg ! Stop ! Mr. Togg ! ” 

But the old man had evidently come only to 
throw the bundle in and showed no' disposition 
to throw himself in after it. The heavy bur- 
den left him, curved out a little way and fell 
straight down with an inaudible plunge and 
was swallowed up. An instant after, Mr. 
Togg, shaking like a leaf, had cast himself 
at Matlock’s feet and, clinging to his knees, 
pleaded that he, a harmless old man, might be 
spared. 

" Get up, Mr. Togg ! ” said the young man. 
" Tt’s only me ! Don’t you know me? ” 

Mr. Togg rose up slowly, never letting Mat- 
lock go, but grasping him all the way and 
holding him at last by the shoulders, while 
their faces almost touched. 

" Willard ! ” he faltered, " Willard ! ” but 
being unable to get further, broke down and 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIE8. 


57 


began to cry. Matlock cried too from very 
nervousness. 

"What is it, Mr. Togg? ” he asked, event- 
ually. 

" Don’t know,” replied the undertaker. 
"Very weak. Very silly. Head very poor. 
Willard, I can’t get over- what’s happened here. 
It’s taken all the man out of me.” 

The young man felt that there was a great 
bond of sympathy between them. He grasped 
Mr. Togg’s hand and wrung it silently. 

"Mr. Togg,” he said, "let’s go home and try 
to forget it.” 

Together they walked up the silent road, 
hand in hand, like two children. It was too 
dark to see, but they did not like to look 
at each other, and instinctively kept their 
heads turned away. When they came into 
the light they seemed ashamed of what had 
passed. Bach felt that he understood the 
other. This interchange of feeling was 
momentary, but it was lasting. It was a 
long, long time before either spoke in the 
other’s presence of Madeline Perham, the 
despised Lily of the Valley, who slept beneath 
the snows. 


58 


THE KOMAMCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER YI. 

THE MIRACLE. 

I N the course of time, after young Mr. Mat- 
lock had returned to his home in the city 
of Hew York, and while her husband was still 
on the sea, Mrs. Bathrow gave birth to a fe- 
male child. The flickering spark of life which 
became manifest in the new being seemed in- 
deed to have been all that the mother had to 
bestow, for she never heard her baby cry. 
When Mr. Bathrow got the message which 
told him that his wife had died while his child 
had lived, he was on his way to America. He 
did not finish that journey, but stopping mid- 
way, set his face back again for another voy- 
age. He could not bear to visit that blighted 
home whose every nook would now remind 
him of her whom he had lost, even though it 
had been his home from boyhood. He felt that 
his grief was yet too keen and poignant to 
endure the associations which everything in 
that old homestead would bring to him, and 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


59 


toward the little daughter who might naturally 
have felt the mantle of his affection falling 
from her mother, he acknowledged himself to 
be indifferent. She was one of the painful 
elements which, serving to remind him con- 
stantly of his wife, kept his agony fresh. To 
him she seemed the cause of all his bitterness. 
But for her, the sweet young bride with whom 
he had thought to live a life of happiness 
might still have filled the lonely house at 
Surfport with the light that made it beautiful. 
He did not hate her for this, but he felt 
that he did not wish to see her. For many 
months he did not come home. When he 
did, he stayed but a day or two, oppressed 
with gloom, and went away, breathing less 
heavily. He did not neglect his daughter, 
other than that he denied her his presence 
and his best affection. Perhaps from a latent 
sense of his own unconquerable injustice he 
spared himself no expense to please her or 
render her happy. He sent her costly presents 
from foreign countries. He was not a rich 
man, but from her earliest childhood Lilian 
Bathrow had dresses and jewels like a queen. 
Mr. and Mrs. Togg were instructed to see 
that her education was not neglected and 
to deny her nothing. Any sum, however 


60 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


lavish, which was asked in her name was 
never refused. 

And so the child grew up, something of an 
orphan, but not at all melancholy, as orphans 
are supposed to be, full of play and glee like 
Nature herself, and never seeming to miss 
what was lacking in her ow r n life, as other very 
sympathetic folks were inclined to miss it for 
her. If other people sighed over her, Lilian 
never sighed about herself, except when she 
fell on the rocks and hurt herself. Mr. and 
Mrs. Togg were father and mother to her. 
Her nature was as free and cloudless as the 
sky over Surfport on the clearest of summer 
days. She did not care much for the costly 
raiment which her father sent her. 

They had for a time the novelty of play- 
things, but eventually found their way to the 
cedar-wood chests wherein she kept them. 
She did not like them because they interfered 
with the freedom of her motion, and freedom 
of motion was everything with her. She liked 
to play in the surf, and drink in the delicious 
air, and look far off into the universe from table 
rock, and watch the white clouds banked in the 
sky, and feel that she was a part of all this 
untrammelled and beautiful thing, the world. 
Lilian was herself and herself alone. From 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


61 


her childhood she showed that she possessed 
a piquant individuality. Her ways were her 
own; her laugh was her own; her thoughts 
and feelings all were hers. In her earlier years 
and in the gay and sprightly moods of her 
after life, her face was her own too. How was 
it at other times? Let us see. 

The first peculiarity that was noticed about 
the infant while she lay in her cradle was re- 
marked by Mrs. Togg. She did not resemble 
in complexion and feature either of her parents. 
Both of them had dark eyes. The baby’s eyes 
were blue. And as she grew it was seen that 
the outline of her face, the color of her hair, 
the expression of her countenance, were simi- 
larly different. Sometimes there was a certain 
something in her face which made Mrs. Togg 
vaguely uncomfortable. At such times she 
was almost persuaded that the child reminded 
her strongly of some one whom she had known, 
though she could not determine who that some 
one was. When the child smiled the dim re- 
semblance passed away. Hers was a nature 
that laughed out loud, and it was seldom, either 
with others or alone, that she did not smile. 
In moments of deep gravity the resemblance 
was stronger, but it reached its climax on the 
rare occasions when she wore a sad and mistful 


62 


THE ROMANCE OE THE LILIES. 


mien. Once when Mrs. Togg inadvertently 
said something about Mr. Bathrow’s aversion 
for his home, a momentary shadow fell across 
the little face and the good lady felt a sudden 
conviction that she had solved the mystery. 
But it was not so. The child forgot to grieve, 
the shadow passed away, and with it, Mrs. 
Togg’s inspiration. That the resemblance was 
there she was convinced deeply. She often 
spoke of it to her husband ; but his sight was 
dull, he mistrusted his wife’s eyes, and he did not 
help her. The housekeeper was sure it would 
come again, that she would solve it yet, and 
she waited. She was quite right. It did come. 

It was a drowsy summer afternoon when the 
child was six years old. Mrs. Togg went into 
an upper room and found her asleep upon a 
couch. The face was suffused with the flush 
of youth. The lips were parted. The lashes 
drooped over the cheek. The little hands 
were clasped in a tangle of golden hair. May- 
hap she dreamed of the loss of some dear 
childish treasure. There was a melancholy 
shadow about the sensitive corners of the 
mouth, a little gleam as of tears, beneath the 
eyelids. Mrs. Togg came forward, with beat- 
ing heart, bent close down and started back. 

At last ! For one breathless, petrified 


ME ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 63 

moment she gazed and then turned quickly, 
and as fast as her unsupple limbs would carry 
her, went and brought her husband. She had 
not told him why she called him, but her man- 
ner was impressive enough without that. She 
drew him by his sleeve on tiptoe to the bedside 
and pointing down upon the sleeping face, 
uttered the simple name : 

" Madeline Perham ! ” 

She could not have frightened Mr. Togg 
more if she had shown him a spectre. The 
child had been his idol. She was not less 
dear to him afterwards. She still called him 
grandpa and climbed upon his knee; but be- 
tween him and the object of his affection there 
had crept a film of fear. Even when he loved 
her most he was afraid. 

Then others noticed it and it got abroad. 
At first people laughed and only the credu- 
lous believed it, but as time went on and Lilian 
grew to girlhood, the skeptics were convinced. 
With a saucy laugh, a toss of her head and a 
wayward gesture of her supple arms she could 
throw the mystery to the winds ; but when she 
was sitting lost in thought it came again, and 
when she slept there was no longer room to 
doubt whose face that was which looked forth 
from the pillow. A lithe, graceful figure, 


64 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


great blue eyes, fair hair, a face of surpassing 
beauty! She Avas indeed the lost Madeline. 

One day the story came to the ears of the 
elder Perham. He gave no apparent heed to 
it, but he contrived to see Lilian. She was in 
one of her gayest moods and he departed mut- 
tering of idle gossip. A month later he saw 
her at the funeral of a playmate. A great 
paleness overspread his face. He went out 
suddenly and from that day shunned the child 
and all connected with her as he would have 
avoided death itself. 

As the years passed the resemblance did not 
fade but rather strengthened. Somebody told 
the elder Bathrow, but he was so indignant 
and angry that nobody ever dared broach the 
subject to him again. The main interest in 
the matter seems to have been taken by Dr. 
Motley, Avho was indeed peculiarly interested 
in the case. After carefully thinking the cir- 
cumstances over, he prepared a paper for a 
medical journal which was duly published and 
created a deal of comment at home and abroad 

" It is impossible for me to doubt,” wrote 
Dr. Motley, " that the child has received her 
features direct from the impression produced 
upon the mother’s mind by the startling ap- 
pearance of the face of her dead friend at a 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


65 


critical time. I do not see how there is any 
room to avoid this direct conclusion, whatever 
our theories might predispose us to think upon 
such a topic. It may be said that it is inex- 
plicable. But there are many things in com- 
mon experience quite as much so. What is 
there explainable, for instance, about the most 
ordinary case of birth-mark? No; I am sure 
there is but one explanation of the phenome- 
non. The conditions were simply ripe and the 
cause wrought the effect. We read that the 
old Greeks produced the most perfect men and 
women in the world. They left no stone un- 
turned to reach that result, pre-natal or other- 
wise. Why were they so careful to surround 
the coming mothers with beautiful faces and 
faultless features that the divine idea of physi- 
cal beauty might be before them day and night 
except that they apprehended in this mental 
picture a material effect?” 

This was all very well till a learned scientist 
in London got at the good doctor’s paper and 
tore it to pieces. He showed very clearly that 
heredity was a figment, and maternity a phys- 
ical result of a physical law, — a law not at all 
to be disturbed in its workings by so immaterial 
a thing as a thought in a human mind; that 
the best authorities did not recognize pre-natal 

5 


66 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


impressions of this hind, or of any kind; that 
the case in point was the very worst and most 
flimsy of the many cases which it had been 
his painful duty to set right ; that physicians 
in ordinary practice were too apt to be careless, 
hasty in arriving at conclusions from insecure 
premises, too unscientific, — in short, he proved 
beyond a doubt that the American doctor was 
an ass. 

Nevertheless Lilian Bathrow lived on her 
sweet and innocent life and became in fact the 
second Lily of the Talley. 

Mrs. Togg heard of Dr. Motley’s paper and 
though he had carefully concealed all the names 
and other facts that could possibly lead to 
identification, she was immeasurably indignant. 

" I can’t say how disappointed I am in that 
doctor,” she said to her husband. ” But it 
only goes to show the vanity of human learnin’. 
I can’t see and you can’t see, Joshua, poor, 
erring creatures that we are, both on us, 
why the Lord wanted to interfere in an hum- 
ble house like this; but he has interfered and 
it don’t become folks in their worldly pride to 
go searching into his whys and wherefores. 
It’s dead wrong to go accounting for a miracle.” 

Mr. Togg uttered a fearful and tremulous 
" amen.” 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


67 


CHAPTER YII. 

matlock’s friend in London. 
ILLARD MATLOCK’S father was 



▼ » the head of a large New York im- 
porting house which had branches in London 
and Paris. The young man assumed, early in 
life, a responsible position in the employ of 
Matlock & Co., and became more familiar, by 
reason of his duties, with the streets of London 
and Paris than with those of the American 
city. The business manager of the London 
house was a certain Mr. Yendelle, very bluff, 
very hearty, very red in the face, and exceed- 
ingly obstinate. He had a son who was not 
always a pleasure to him, a tall, good-looking 
man of fine features, aristocratic face, languid, 
unambitious and cynical. He was said to re- 
semble Mrs. Yendelle, who idolized him. He 
certainly bore no resemblance to his father, 
either in face or temperament. With the 
elder Yendelle, Mr. Bathrow was exceedingly 
friendly and spent all his leisure on-shore 


68 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


hours at his English house. With the younger 
Vendelle, Philip, Willard Matlock, first by 
reason of business relations and then from 
the peculiar fascination of his society, became 
somewhat intimate. 

When Willard Matlock first saw Philip 
Vendelle in London, five years after Mrs. 
Bathrow’s death, he found that there was just 
that difference between their ages. He was 
twenty- three and Vendelle was twenty-eight. 
Matlock was not at that time very much at- 
tracted by his appearance. Philip was leading 
then a feverish, impatient life, flitting from dis- 
sipation to dissipation with uneasy haste, laugh- 
ing loudly at coarse jests at night, and making 
contemptuous remarks about the mental calibre 
of those who indulged in them in the morn- 
ing, subject to transient fits of elation and 
depression, never long in any mood, eccentric, 
careless of the world’s opinion, dissatisfied. 
His parents, who had expected great things 
of him while he was a schoolboy, were not 
only grieved, but one of them at least, sorely 
vexed with him. The elder Vendelle was of 
that ancient and honorable school which rec- 
ognizes the necessity of " wild oats ” in the life 
of every well-balanced and promising young 
man ; but unhappily for his own peace of mind, 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


69 


he agreed with the school in fixing an early 
limit to the ebullition of youthful spirits. He 
was very much disturbed that his son Philip 
did not, as he expressed it, " sober off,” but on 
the contrary showed symptoms of rapidly de- 
generating into a " good for nothing.” Mrs. 
Vendelle was sure that her child was slan- 
dered and implored Mr. Vendelle to be patient. 
Mr. Vendelle tired of patience and had some 
words with his son. Philip turned on his heel 
and left the house. Four years later, his 
parents heard of him in India. Five years 
after that, he again appeared in London. lie 
was much changed, both in looks and in 
habits. At thirty-seven he was no longer a 
butterfly. From being everywhere, he shunned 
society. From indulging in every dissipa- 
tion, he limited himself apparently to the 
most gentlemanly vices. He had gone away 
a Lothario. He came back an ascetic. He 
had departed with a predilection for low 
company. He returned wrapped up in his 
books. Superficial people thought him won- 
derfully changed. He had only intensified 
and cyrstallized. He was a cynic because 
the whole trend of his character was in that 
direction. 

It was at this time that Willard Matlock, 


70 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


now thirty-two years of age, formed an inti- 
macy with him. They were friends for their 
very oppositeness. To Matlock, Vendelle was 
always a source of wonder and entertainment. 
Vendelle liked Matlock because he could 
laugh at him without offending him; because 
he always listened to him with attention; be- 
cause he was possessed of the most open and 
generous nature he had ever met. He came 
frequently to Matlock’s rooms in London where 
he felt at liberty to conduct himself with the 
utmost freedom. 

One night toward the close of winter, the 
two men sat luxuriating in the cheerful warmth 
of an open fire, in two great lounging chairs 
tipped at convenient angles. Vendelle, his 
feet on the fender, was drawing consolation 
from a long-stemmed pipe. He was pale, and 
his features were settled into an expression of 
aristocratic languor. The fumes which dis- 
persed from the cloud about his head were 
peculiar and indescribable. He was not smok- 
ing tobacco. Matlock saved himself from the 
disagreeable necessity of wittingly inhaling 
those fumes by puffing, in his turn, at an 
Havana. 

" If I live,” said Matlock, " when the sum- 
mer comes, it will find me at a little seaport 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


71 


town in the State of Maine, in my own 
country.” 

"Why do you go way off there?” queried 
Vendelle. "As if there wasn’t just as good 
bathing and just as good fishing within two 
hours of London.” 

"But I am going home in the spring, Ven- 
delle, and I shall not be near London. As for 
the fishing and bathing I don’t think this place 
I speak of enjoys any superiority over a thou- 
sand other places I could name.” 

" What else is there at the sea-shore but 
draughty hotels, bad food and stupid people?” 

" There is a girl at this place whom I have 
some curiosity to see.” 

" Girl ! ” repeated Vendelle, contemptuously. 
” How old is she? ” 

" Sixteen,” returned Matlock. 

" No more? ” said Vendelle; "then I don’t 
understand. How long since you have seen 
her?” 

" I have never seen her.” 

" You are enigmatical, friend. Why, then, 
do you wish to see her? ” 

"Why? Because — Well, I don’t know. 
I knew her mother. They tell me, too, that 
she bears a strong resemblance to a woman I 
once knew — a woman long since dead,” he 


72 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


added quickly, seeing that Vendelle was look- 
ing at him. 

"Ah!” said Vendelle. "Well, was that 
your romance ? Or why haven’t you married ? ” 

Matlock flushed up deeply. Vendelle uttered 
a short laugh which was like a cough. 

" I didn’t expect to touch you, but I see I 
have. It’s just like you to live on the recol- 
lections of an old and dead passion till your 
dying day. Matlock, you are too poetic. All 
poets are fools. It isn’t natural for a man to 
have that sort of feeling. It’s morbid and is 
only possible to certain temperaments that 
obstinately nurse it. However, I won’t advise 
you. A dead woman is always preferable to a 
live one.” 

"You are making game of me on a small 
cause,” said Matlock whose confusion had been 
but momentary. " I acknowledge no such 
romance. You ask me why I haven’t married, 
as if it were a matter that demanded an expla- 
nation. Why haven’t you? ” 

" I might answer that in two ways and be 
equally candid,” said Vendelle. "I might say 
that I long ago got over my passion for lotter- 
ies, or I might reply that if I had no admira- 
tion for a fool because she was pretty I ought 
to be above marrying her for any sordid con- 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


73 


sideration, and if I did admire such a one it 
would be because I respected her, and if I 
respected a woman I should probably bestow 
upon her such tenderness as there is left in 
my nature to bestow; and once that took place 
I could not spoil her life by making her suffer 
me.” 

"That answer is like you, Yendelle,” said 
Matlock. " And really I cannot imagine you 
married. But candidly, if you are in earnest, 
I don’t agree with you. I think it is in you to 
make a woman thoroughly happy.” 

" You really do? ” 

" I really do.” 

" Then you are a greater ass than I thought,” 
said Yendelle, curtly. "One day you may 
find it out, for I tell you frankly it would not 
surprise me if, sooner or later, I came to the 
pretty fool. Without admiration, without re- 
spect, I shall succeed in disguising my indiffer- 
ence for a time; then she will discover the 
truth. If she is tender, it will break her heart. 
If she is tough, she will find her consolation 
elsewhere. That is a pleasant picture, cheer- 
ful, satisfactory — ” 

"But why, if you feel this way, Yen- 
delle — ” 

" Why? Simply because my father, with his 


74 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


customary obstinacy, and my mother, with 
her usual illogical solicitude, have thoroughly 
made up their minds that I am sick and that 
marriage will cure me. ' Love,’ my mother calls 
it. 'Interest in life ’ is Mr. Vendelle’s favorite 
expression. They don’t understand that my 
heart, if tapped, would emit a dull sound like a 
stone. This is their old folly of trying to drive 
me where I don’t want to go. It’s the old 
folly that has wasted my life like a desert, and 
made me a curse to myself and everybody else. 
They began this when I was twenty. I told 
them then they were wrong. They wouldn’t 
see it then; they won’t see it now. One of 
these days, at their cost and mine, they 
will.” 

Vendelle had nearly gotten the better of his 
customary tired look. 

" But surely, Vendelle, they wouldn’t coerce 
you in a matter of this sort ! ” said Matlock. 

"Wouldn’t?” repeated Vendelle, contempt- 
uously. " I thought, Matlock, you had had 
enough business relations with Mr. Vendelle 
to know something about him.” 

" But even supposing he would, how could 
he?” 

"Easily, friend. If Vendelle ever comes to 
the point where he commands, I shall probably 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


75 


obey him. I have had two or three bouts with 
him in the course of my life. In the first I 
won, but he didn’t know it. In the second he 
did win, and he does know it. I shall not 
fight again. Just a word now in the strictest 
confidence. I was barely of age w'hen my 
father, not liking the way I was conducting 
myself, determined for the purpose of sobering 
me down, to marry me off. He chose a 
daughter of one of his friends, a nice girl, but 
she was fortunately troubled with the consump- 
tion. I mean, of course, fortunately for her. 
But I did not know it. I was hound not to 
marry for the very deviltry of the opposition. 
I dropped over to Hew York one afternoon 
and what do you suppose I did?” 

" I can’t think,” said Matlock. 

Y endelle’s voice sank to a whisper. " I mar- 
ried, Matlock, a girl whom I had not known 
two weeks.” 

Matlock stared incredulously. 

"I did that,” said Yendille, hastening on, 
" out of pure revenge. The girl was pretty. 
After I married her I was so unfortunate as to 
lose my head about her. I thought to entrap 
the old man. I entrapped myself.” 

Yendelle suddenly forgot what he was say- 
ing and fell into a brown study, pipe in hand, 


76 


THE KOMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


looking at the fire with an uneasy shaking of 
the head which made Matlock nervous. 

" Well,” said the latter after waiting a suffi- 
cient time, "how did it end?” 

Vendelle started and flashed a quick look 
at Matlock. 

"End?” he repeated. "Badly. I thought 
she was a shop girl when I married her. I 
believed what she said. She was poor. She 
seemed to have been enduring a process of 
slow starvation. I did not think that was con- 
sistent with anything but the life of a Puritan. 
I was mistaken. She deceived me. But there 
— why rake this up again? I have not 
thought of it for years. Really, I haven’t.” 

Vendelle took the poker and languidly 
stirred the fire. Then, assuming his old 
negligent attitude, he yawned very naturally, 
drew at his pipe twice or thrice and went on. 

" But I was only telling you about my bouts 
with Mr. Vendelle. This was the first one. 
I had checkmated him. As I said, he never 
knew it. I never had an opportunity to move 
my piece. The girl to whom I w r as engaged 
died of the consumption, which saved her a 
broken heart, for she was foolish enough to be 
fond of me and — I came home.” 

" And your wife? ” queried Matlock. 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


77 


" Pray don’t use that term even to me,” said 
Vendelle, emphatically. "I heard that she 
was dead. I afterwards verified it. That 
ends her. Now I come to the second bout 
with Mr. Vendelle. That was five years ago. 
He did not like my style of living. I will not 
defend it. It was reckless and disgraceful. 
He wanted me to marry again. He has a 
mania for marrying me. Well, he spoke sharply 
and I drifted about the Continent and finally 
got to India. It was a hard life. I en- 
dured it as long as I could, and then I came 
back. Why? Because my credit had run out 
and my capital was gone. I have got through 
fighting the world. The result of the contest 
is altogether too certain to permit of any real 
interest in the battle. I made up my mind 
henceforth to live on charity. My father pays 
my bills, and he doesn’t scruple to be mean 
about it. Why? Because he isn’t satisfied 
■with me. He wants me to be something that I 
cannot, by any possibility, be. He’s bound to 
marry me and he’ll do it yet. He won the 
second bout when I came home to him. He’ll 
win the third when he makes it contingent 
upon getting any more money from him that I 
make some poor girl miserable for life. That’s 
just the issue between Vendelle and myself, 


78 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


past, present and future. But it’s a matter of 
no moment, any way, and not worth talking 
about. To resume a topic that is of some in- 
terest, I like this substitute of this American 
friend of yours, fairly well. It hasn’t lost any 
of its strength, apparently, from lying neg- 
lected among your boxes for sixteen years. I 
have smoked four pipesful. "When this is 
gone I shall be out. I want some more. How 
can I get it? ” 

" I’ll write to Mr. Togg at once,” said Mat- 
lock. " It’s strange that I have never heard 
anything from him on the subject for so long. 
He was very sanguine about introducing it 
once. He must have abandoned it; for if I 
had once been reminded of the matter, I should 
probably have got it smoked up long ago.” 

" I don’t understand why you didn’t try it 
yourself,” said Vendelle. 

"Excuse me,'” returned Matlock, quickly. 
" It is associated in my mind, — oddly enough, 
too, — with unpleasant things. I mean the 
night I first met it is still a very unpleasant 
night in my memory. I don’t know that there 
is a great deal of logic in this, but I can’t help 
the association.” 

" Tell your Mr. Togg,” said Vendelle, "that 
a man who has smoked hashish with the 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


79 


native Hindoos, who has enjoyed the instruc- 
tion of a Chinese professor in the art of getting 
opium to burn, who has sucked at real Havanas 
in the valley of the Vuelta Abajo and has 
been all his life more or less of a smoker, 
pronounces his compound soothing to the 
nerves and gratifying to the taste. In short, 
it’s a success. You may tell him too, — hon- 
estly, I think, — that this man rarely becomes 
enthusiastic about anything and is willing to 
pay him his price.” 

" I will do so,” said Matlock. 


80 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER YIII. 

MR. TOGG’s REPLY. 

I F Willard Matlock had accepted all the 
disagreeable inferences that Philip Ven- 
delle’s conversation might have caused to be 
drawn about himself, he would hardly have 
reached any degree of intimacy with him. 
Rightly or wrongly, he believed that there 
was a sensitive nature beneath the callous ex- 
terior which the young cynic affected. Much 
that Yendelle said Matlock believed to be 
uttered for effect. In getting his estimate of 
the true character of his friend, Matlock availed 
himself of the thousand little trivialities of 
manner and habit which escape the attention 
of the casual observer. He conceived Ven- 
delle to be a man of honor and of generous 
impulses. He knew, indeed, that he was sub- 
ject to fits of passion and when strongly ex- 
cited was hardly responsible for his deeds; 
that he possessed much of the obstinacy and 
tenacity of purpose which distinguished the 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


81 


elder of that name; but he would have trusted 
Vendelle with his purse or with his good name 
in serene consciousness of absolute safety. 

That very night, when Vendelle had gone, 
Matlock sat down and wrote a letter to Mr. 
Togg in which he reminded him of the prom- 
ise made so long ago, to try to introduce " the 
substitute ” among his friends. He apologized 
for being so tardy about it, and gave the 
reason. This was that the package of "the 
substitute” with which Mr. Togg had pre- 
sented him had been mislaid and forgotten 
and had only very recently been discovered in 
the neglected corner of an old receptacle. 
Matlock had then hastened to make amends 
for his forgetfulness by presenting the sample 
to a friend, who was in every way qualified to 
judge of its merits and in a position to intro- 
duce it in good society, if he liked it. Mr. 
Togg was to accept his very late congratula- 
tions on the success of his compound and his 
assurances that his friend, Willard Matlock, 
had not forgotten, because he had neglected 
him; but would, in the future, do everything 
in his power to help him establish the substi- 
tute in common use. The sample had been 
exhausted and his friend was clamorous for 
more. Would Mr. Togg forward to London. 


82 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


a sufficient quantity of his narcotic to permit 
of a wider trial of -its merits and send a bill of 
the same to the writer? 

In due time Matlock got a reply from Mr. 
Togg. After he had scanned it in solitary 
bewilderment he took it to his friend and read 
it aloud to him: 

My Dear Boy Matlock : 

Few shocks have there been in my life like the 
shock of reading your letter. If anything there was 
that I thought was buried so deep under a weight of 
years that it never could come forth again into the 
light of day it was this infernal compound. You 
haven’t dabbled, I hope, with it ; or I couldn’t forgive 
myself. Willard, that compound is the Devil’s own, 
and I have made over to him all rights and claims 
which I, Joshua Togg, ever possessed in it. Your 
offer is generous and your good wishes have touched 
me, but if you were to give me the receipt of the 
elixir of life in return, I wouldn’t send you that 
formula. Make such excuses as you can to your 
friend. Tell him Togg is dead, or that Togg’s mem- 
ory has failed him, or that Togg is a lunatic ; but 
assure him that it is impossible to get of him what 
he asks. Togg’s substitute has done all the mischief 
it ever will in this world, if Togg can prevent its 
doing any more. I would give a good deal to see 
you. I am getting to be a very old man. I wonder 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


83 


if I shall die before you come again to Surfport? 
Lilian is sixteen and the best girl in the world ; and 
she would like to see the man she has often heard 
about. Your friend, 

Joshua Togg. 

"What do you make of it?” Matlock asked, 
when he had finished. 

"Nobody could make anything of it except 
that your friend is in his dotage,” said Ven- 
delle, impatiently. "If there are any faults 
about the substitute, why not say what they 
are? This man missed his calling by being 
born too soon. He ought to have been a sooth- 
sayer. He is too fond of mystery. He enjoys 
being lurid. I don’t like these sensational 
fellows.” 

" Are you quite sure that this is the way to 
dispose of the matter?” questioned Matlock, 
doubtfully. " I never thought Mr. Togg w r as 
inclined to be sensational. Are you — are you 
quite sure you didn’t experience any bad effects 
yourself, after — ” 

Vendelle interrupted him with a laugh. 

"If the devil was ever in the compound, 
friend, then the devil don’t appreciate being 
confined in the corner of a sea chest for six- 
teen years. He got out. I assure you I never 


84 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


enjoyed a smoke more, and I never slept better 
after one, and I assure you further, that being 
in no awe of his Satanic majesty, myself, I’ll 
have some more of that compound.” 

"Really, Yendelle,” expostulated Matlock, 
" this is foolish of you. Togg was an eccen- 
tric, but he was very far from being a fool — ” 
" Then lie’s gone daft since,” said Yendelle, 
almost spitefully. " Give me this Togg’s ad- 
dress and let me write to him. I’ll make him 
a proposition which if he is fit to be at large 
in a sane community he must accept.” 

"You seem very anxious about a trivial 
matter,” said Matlock. "Why be to all this 
trouble? Why not let it go? ” 

"Because I hate to have a common fellow 
dictate to me in this way,” returned Yendelle. 
" I want to do as I please.” 

So Yendelle wrote to Mr. Togg. He waited 
a long time for a reply, but he never got any. 
Matlock thought this would end the matter. 
He was mistaken. 


THE ROMANCE OE THE LILIES. 


85 


CHAPTER IX. 

MATLOCK COMES BACK. 

J ULY found Willard Matlock at Surfport. 

His coming was expected and Mrs. Togg 
had prepared her best room for him. As the 
train left him at the railroad station, toward the 
close of a sultry day, he saw the familiar figure, 
awkward, ungainly as ever, a little grayer per- 
haps, a trifle more stooping possibly, but still 
much the same cheerless old Togg of sixteen 
years ago, waiting with a sleepy horse hitched 
to a dilapidated wagon, to take him home. 
Mr. Togg seemed much overcome by the 
meeting. He did not say anything articulate, 
though he apparently endeavored to, but 
grasped Matlock’s hand warmly, and held it 
longer than necessary. Matlock, on his side, 
was not without his own emotions. 

Together they got into the funereal convey- 
ance and the old horse jogged sleepily down 
the road. The cattle were resting in the fields 
along the way 5 the dust lay thick and white 


86 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


in the track before them. They passed the 
little town centre with its few stores and single 
public building clustered in an ambitious group 
with a forlorn attempt at enterprise and show ; 
and further on they reached the house whose 
doors were shut. It looked exactly as it had 
looked on that afternoon when Matlock had 
wondered how a thing inanimate could seem 
so harsh and cruel. There was no sign of life 
about the premises. Weeds were growing in 
the yard ; grass covered the path which led to 
the entrance, and an irregular tangle of under- 
growth clung about the fences, badly out of 
repair. 

" Does Mr. Perham still live there?” Mat- 
lock could not refrain from asking. 

"Perham?” said Togg. "Left town — two 
years.” 

"And Mrs. Perham? ” 

" Dead,” said Togg, briefly. He seemed 
somewhat nervous, or he shared Matlock’s 
aversion for the place; for he woke the sleepy 
beast into a trot which left the grim house 
quickly out of view. The dull roar which 
Matlock remembered so w T ell, was coming 
faintly to his ears. Even the ocean sang a 
drowsy song on a day like this. The younger 
man was very far from sharing the general 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


87 


somnolence which seemed to possess all things 
animate. His heart beat faster the more 
plainly he heard that lullaby of the waves, and 
when they turned the bend in the road about 
the base of the hill, he acknowledged an un- 
wonted excitement. He had not spoken of her, 
because Mr. Togg had not, but the thought of 
the girl whom he was about to meet for the 
first time, filled him with strange emotion. 
He wanted to hear about her, but he hesitated 
to inquire, and Mr. Togg did not volunteer any 
information. 

" By the way, Mr. Togg,” said Matlock, " I 
got your letter.” 

Mr. Togg looked straight at the ears of his 
horse. 

" The letter about your substitute,” explained 
Matlock. 

The old man was apparently falling asleep. 

"I thought it very curious,” went on Mat- 
lock, " but I presumed you had your reasons.” 

Mr. Togg woke up long enough to utter 
two words: "I had” — and relapsed again. 
Matlock hinted and wondered in vain. It was 
very evident that this was not a propitious 
topic. 

The patient horse at last drew up before the 
gateway with the lantern still hanging in the 


88 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


arch. There was Mrs. Togg in a white 
apron and the sprucest of caps, standing at 
the door to welcome him; and she did wel- 
come him, with a tearful fervor that astonished 
Matlock. 

Despite his conscious trepidation the young 
man felt a pang as he recrossed that threshold 
again after sixteen years. The familiar rooms 
were dim and cool and pervaded with a still- 
ness that permitted the ticking of the tall clock 
in the hall to be most audible at all points. 
Matlock was curious, but disappointed. Mrs. 
Togg welcomed him again to Surfport by 
opening the floodgates of what seemed to him 
at least sixteen years of pent-up reminiscences, 
confidences and interrogatories. Matlock was 
made aware of the very poor condition of her 
liver and of Mr. Togg’s blood, and of what the 
doctor had said, and how much she had suf- 
fered and expected to suffer, but not a word 
to relieve his intense curiosity about the third 
inmate of the little home. 

Mr. Togg inadvertently came to his rescue 
by asking his wife if Lilian had returned. 

" Law ! ” said Mrs. Togg, " what a question ! 
Is the child ever in when she can be out? I 
give her up long, long ago. You can’t do 
nothing with her,” Mrs. Togg made this an- 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


89 


nonncement as if she were rather proud to 
make it. 

"I suppose you refer to Miss Bathrow?” 
questioned Matlock. 

" The same,” said Mrs. Togg. " Only it 
sounds strange to hear you say it. Nobody 
calls her that here. It is either plain Lil or 
'the Lily.’ The last I always did fight against 
as putting a bad odor on an innocent child, 
for you know it’s short for the Lily of the 
Valley, and I needn’t call to your mind what’s 
objectionable in that, Mr. Matlock. But she 
do look dead like her at times; there’s no con- 
cealing that,” she added with confidential com- 
miseration. 

" Don’t ! ” said Mr. Togg, gruffly. " Don’t, 
now. I won’t have it.” He had been filling 
his pipe and he walked abruptly out of the 
room. 

" Did anybody ever see such an obstinate 
old critter as Togg?” commented Mrs. Togg. 
" He tries me beyond all. He don’t want the 
girl to look like that other and he won’t allow 
it, iu spite of everything. And Bathrow’s just 
like him. And yet it’s town talk.” 

" Where is she now? ” Matlock was en- 
couraged to inquire. 

" In the rocks, like as not. Oh, she’s a wild 


90 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


thing, Mr. Matlock. She’s like her father in 
having her own way and he won’t allow her 
to be crossed in anything. So what can I do? 
He wanted her to go down to New York to 
finish off her education — for she’s no fool 
Mr. Matlock, I can tell you for a country girl ; 
but she took on so about leaving that nasty 
old beach down there and old Togg and me, — 
for she’s dreadful fond on us, — that Bathrow 
let it go. And here she is and here she’s like 
enough to stay. She has her books and down 
she goes on to the rocks to read them. She’s 
got a boat and there ain’t a young fellow in 
the town that can pull against her. She can 
fish and run with the best of them and yet she 
ain’t no bigger than a pinch of snuff.” 

"You make me very anxious to see her,” said 
Matlock, naturally enough. 

" Go down to the shore and poke about 
among the stones awhile and if you don’t have 
poor luck you’ll maybe run against her,” was 
Mrs. Togg’s advice. 

"Without evincing undue haste Matlock seized 
the first opportunity of escape to follow her 
recommendation. 

The sun was setting, as Matlock neared the 
ocean, in a glory of crimson and gold behind 
the hills, There was a veil of reflected light 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


91 


upon the sea which made it seem like an undu- 
lating sheet of steel which had lost its lustre. 
The table rock rose up in front of him, flushed 
and rosy, but apparently deserted. Matlock 
passed down on to the beach and ascended the 
irregular flight of steps to the top. He looked 
about him, anxiously, — not at the coast, head- 
land after headland; not at the sea with its 
barren islands ; not at the quiet valley behind 
him, with the Bathrow house close by, the white 
road meandering along, and the farm-houses 
dotted here and there, — but up and down 
among the rocks, near and at hand, for any sign 
of her. She was not to be seen from the 
vantage ground of that part of the rock which 
projected out over the sea. Beyond this, there 
was a portion of the giant, irregularly broken 
into roomy nooks and crannies which had no 
corners nor angles, but were well rounded all 
and polished, though it seemed impossible that 
the sea could ever rise to this level. Peering 
hopelessly about among the bowlders here, 
Matlock at last espied a flutter of cloth, and 
little by little, following up the clew, with an 
instinctive but needless assumption of care- 
lessness, he sauntered down in that direction. 
The boom of the sea rendered his footsteps 
inaudible. Even the bit of stone which he 


92 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


dislodged and saw go glancing and bounding 
down, from point to point, fell unheard into 
the heaving water. He turned the corner of a 
bowlder suddenly and saw a girl roofed in by 
a tall canopy of stone reclining negligently 
upon a granite couch made easy by a mass of 
dry sea-weed, covered by a gay colored shawl. 

She still half held a book which rested open 
on its face. There was an unconscious freedom 
in her attitude which made her a revelation to 
Matlock. At first sight, he thought her look- 
ing beneath her long lashes, with eyes half 
open, at the steel gray sea which stretched 
away before her, dotted afar off with sails. 
But he soon saw that she was asleep. A 
lithe, graceful figure, eyes which he knew 
were blue, fair hair, a face of surpassing 
beauty ! 

Matlock felt a pang, the old boyish romance, 
the sadness of his after recollections, mingled 
with a breathless sense of new delight. This 
vision made the past distinct again, as if the 
eighteen years which had elapsed since he him- 
self was sixteen, were as nothing. He saw 
again the fluttering figure of Madeline Per- 
ham on the rock above, with the glow of the 
setting sun making a halo in her hair and the 
sea breeze filling the ribbons with motion, and 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


93 


he said to himself : It is indeed a miracle ! 
The two are as one. Matlock felt an awe 
such as he feels who sees himself in the pres- 
ence of something too mighty for his feeble 
understanding to encompass. 

And as he stood and watched her, she 
sighed and woke. She sat up, at once, a 
deeper flush rising into her cheeks than that 
normal glow of youth which had been there 
before. 

" I am sorry I disturbed you, Miss Bathrow,” 
said the young man with some embarrassment. 
" Perhaps you will feel less alarmed if I tell 
you that I am Mr. Willard Matlock.” 

She arose with a natural confidence, which 
did not seem like boldness, and smilingly held 
out her hand. Two dimples came into her 
cheeks ; the parted lips showed the teeth ; 
the eyes seemed to sparkle ; the gentle 
melancholy which expressed itself in the lines 
of that sweet mouth awhile ago had vanished 
utterly, and there played about the pliant 
corners now little coquettish lightenings. 
Matlock was amazed at the transformation. 
He held out his own hand in response, with 
such a stare that the dimples, after a brief 
struggle against it, deepened and a merry 
laugh rang out frankly amid the stones. 


94 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


" You look so thunderstruck, Mr. Matlock,” 
she explained. " I suppose you did not expect 
to find Mr. Bathrow’s daughter quite so much 
of a savage? ” She gave a swift gesture with 
both her supple arms downward apologetically 
to call attention to her costume. Her dainty 
figure was clad in a snug fitting garment of 
unpretentious design, surmounted with a blood- 
red cape bound lightly by a cord across her 
breast and shoulder. A. hat of creamy straw, 
encircled with a broad and blushing ribbon, 
had fallen at her feet and the wind played with 
a careless flood of golden hair that waved 
about her smiling face. 

A conventional compliment arose to Mat- 
lock’s lips, but he felt ashamed of it and did 
not say it. 

" You mistook me,” he did say, gravely. " I 
am something of a dreamer myself. What 
people call the trivialities of life often impress 
me with an unreasonable sense of their im- 
portance. It was a little thing for me to take 
your hand; but somehow when I meet a per- 
son — ” 

"You look a long way ahead?” she broke 
in, gayly. " And you were wondering how the 
acquaintance thus begun would end? Oh, I 
have heard all about you and I know I shall 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


95 


like you. You may be a queer man, but you 
will find me a queerer girl.” 

The young man was already of that opinion, 
but it was a queerness that charmed him. 

"I trust our acquaintance will ripen into 
friendship,” he said earnestly, " and that it will 
always continue.” 

"Friends? Oh yes,” said Lilian, jubilantly. 
" Why, I never quarrel with anybody. Even 
the lobsters are friendly with me.” 

They went up on to the broad surface of the 
rock. Matlock would have helped her, but 
she showed him that she was much more agile 
than he by suddenly disappearing behind a 
bowlder and the next moment looking down 
pantingly from the level above. When they 
stood together on the flat plain she waved her 
hand about her and said to Matlock : " This 

is my kingdom. How do you like it? ” 

Matlock looked around. The western clouds 
were banked in a paradise of color. The 
whole landscape was tinted with a sad reflected 
splendor. The tops of the rocks for miles and 
miles were kissed with a rosy glow. The sea 
sung a good-night lullaby along the shore. 
The white sea gulls flew about in graceful 
curves. It seemed to the young man that the 
world must suddenly have grown more beau- 


96 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


tiful. He looked into the matchless face be- 
side him and saw there another world still 
more entrancing. And at that moment he 
realized the consummation of that vision which 
he had seen upon this very spot such a long, 
long time ago, — realized, almost with terror, 
that the romance which had tinged his life for 
years with a pale, melancholy light, had sud- 
denly burst into a glow. 


THE KOMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


97 


CHAPTER X. 

THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 

HERE are, undoubtedly, men of natures 



X 80 sensitive and fine that they are really 
capable of falling in love with the noble qual- 
ities of a woman’s character and of building a 
passion — not merely an affection, but a pas- 
sion upon the graces of a spirit, the attrac- 
tions of a soul ; but Willard Matlock was not 
one of these men. His nature was too quick, 
too spontaneous in its impressions. His whole 
being glowed with delight at the sight of a 
sweet face; the presence of grace thrilled him, 
and it was the divine idea of loveliness finding 
its expression in a woman’s countenance that 
had captivated him. He had fallen in love with " 
beauty for its own entrancing sake. The pos- 
sessor of that beauty might be an angel or a 
devil ; henceforth he must be her slave, though 
the discovery of the one would complete his 
happiness and that of the other make a desert 
of existence. 


7 


98 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LTLIES. 


It is true that, after one glance into Lilian 
Bathrow’s face, Matlock would have staked 
his life on her goodness and her virtue; but 
that was only what his heart told him; and 
hearts are arrant liars, as every close observer 
knows. Matlock knew of Lilian Bathrow only 
that she was beautiful and that he loved her, 
as it had been strangely implanted in him to 
love her, even before she was born; and that 
was all. Whether the forces which animated 
this radiant being were in the main good or 
evil, whether she was worthy the shrine in the 
temple where he had placed her, was a matter 
yet to be determined. 

In pursuing this absorbing investigation 
Matlock did not allow himself to think of 
consequences. He was conscientious, some- 
times painfully so, and there was a grave 
matter of conscience here which he feared to 
face immediately. He was afraid if he reflected 
deeply upon what he was doing he would go 
away from Surfport at once. Lilian Bathrow 
was a child and he was a man, more than twice 
her age. She was sixteen. He was thirty - 
four. The iniquity and the sin was all summed 
up in this statement. His only excuse was 
that he was man enough, and would ever be, 
to keep his secret to himself. And making 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


99 


this excuse to his conscience, he yielded for 
the time to the rest of the temptation. He let 
the delicious weeks glide by. He gave him- 
self unconditionally to the new thrill and de- 
light of being near her, of seeing her constantly, 
of breathing the paradise of the present, un- 
troubled with a distinct presentiment of what 
feeling that was which he possessed who heard 
the gates of Eden closing behind him. 

Eden! Only another name for Surfport! 
Only the rocks, and the rugged scenery, and 
the summer breeze and the white foam curling 
along the shore; the eternal wash of the waves 
made intelligible in two syllables. Matlock 
had been unaware till now how much there 
was in nature; how very blue and soft the 
sky was; how very fair the boundless pros- 
pect that pleased the eye from high places; 
what an intensity of emotion there was in life; 
what rapture there might be in a deep breath 
of fresh air. He took notice for the first time 
of a thousand little things, the very exist- 
ence of which had been before unknown to 
him. The Lily showed him shells, marvellous 
in structure and in beauty, minute creations 
that the eye unaided could not see, wonders 
of patience and industry, creatures that lived 
and moved and yet were not alive, stones that 


100 


TIIE ROMANCE OE THE LILIES. 


glowed with the splendor of precious gems. 
Countless objects that the world despises and 
neglects opened up their silent chambers of 
beauty to his enraptured vision, and he said: 
What a beautiful thing is nature ! How won- 
derful is life! 

And all this was as nothing beside that still 
more breathless study of that infinitely more 
marvellous creation whose fair hand had opened 
the door to this flood of new thoughts. Here 
was a constant source of wonder and delight. 
There was no end to the kaleidoscopic combi- 
nations that the little happenings of daily life 
revealed to him, as he walked beside the glow- 
ing beauty, and looked down into the faultless 
face that mirrored her varying sentiments. 
He discovered at once that she was not a 
shallow child, however much of the flitting 
gayety of the butterfly there might be in her 
temperament and habit. He discovered next 
that she was very far from being an uncultured 
child. Nature herself she knew most truly 
from the close intimacy which she had pre- 
served with her from childhood. The world, — 
that little drop in the infinity that looks so 
like a colossus, or so like a pigmy, according 
to the mind that views it, — the world she 
knew from books. It was astonishing how 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


101 


much she had read, and how much she did 
know, with that boundless impractical knowl- 
edge that conies from such sources. Her read- 
ing had been without method, unrestrained, 
with the most extraordinary ramifications into 
the most opposite subjects, that now might 
naturally be supposed, and that again seemed 
utterly incalculated, to interest a young girl. 
She was a naturalist and a poet unconsciously. 
She possessed a wisdom that often provoked 
Matlock to speechlessness, and an ignorance 
that sometimes excited him to mirth, — never 
to pity. For how can one pity complete hap- 
piness, or regret the very incarnation of joy? 

" I’m afraid my fath.er is vexed with me,” 
she said to Matlock one day, with a tinge of 
self-reproach, " because I preferred to stay 
here with my books instead of going to the 
fashionable school in the city. But I was so 
happy here! And I felt such an uncomfortable 
fear that I should lose something, I don’t know 
what, there. Do you think I ought to have 
gone? ” 

" By no means,” cried Matlock, with the 
enthusiasm of conviction. " God forbid ! ” 

She looked at him curiously. 

" What makes you so very earnest, Willard? ” 
she queried. She called him Willard the, sec- 


102 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


ond day, without the least hesitation, quite as 
a matter of course, and laughed at him so 
unrestrainedly because he clung to the Miss 
Lilian that he forthwith discarded it from 
very confusion. 

" I cannot say,” he answered her, preferring 
an untruth to a truth that would pave the way 
for uncomfortable questions. "Did you never 
feel any curiosity to see the city life, the society 
life that you have read about?” 

" Why, yes,” she answered, without hesita- 
tion, " and some day I expect to.” 

Matlock sighed. 

" Very true,” he reflected; " very true. The 
day will come.” 

She broke out with a peal of merry laughter. 

" What a preacher you would make, Willard. 
You speak like a text. Please don’t, if you want 
me to like you. The first time Aunty ” (she re- 
ferred to Mrs. Togg) " and I ever had a real fight 
was the day I ran away on Sunday to escape 
going to church. I go now because it fright- 
ens the good old soul if I don’t, but privately 
I tell you, Willard, I am a heathen.” 

She said this with a mock solemnity which 
had its end in a light laugh and a reckless 
frolic so close to the edge of the rock that 
Matlock, with a slight cry of alarm, interfered 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


103 


to save her. He placed his arm suddenly 
about her and drew her away. 

" You frighten me sometimes, Lilian,” he 
said. " Have you no fear yourself ? ” 

She looked into his face, flushed and rosy; 
the dimples grew deeper; the white teeth 
gleamed against the carnation of the exquisite 
lips, and she broke into, a rippling laugh. 

"You are so silly!” she said merrily. "I 
was born and brought up here. No one ever 
knew me to drown myself yet.” 

" Let us sit here in the shadow of the 
rock,” said Matlock, " and you shall tell me 
about yourself.” 

She looked at him with a sudden dash of 
roguery which he did not immediately under- 
stand, but went obediently to the seat of sea- 
weed. She had hardly placed herself beside 
him, however, when all at once she sprang up, 
and running from him quickly, stood facing him 
upon the very verge of the overhanging ledge. 
Her dainty feet seemed hardly on the rock. 
Then raising her arms gracefully above her 
head, she slowly bent back her supple body. It 
seemed indeed, as if the steady wind behind her 
which tossed the stray locks like a halo about 
her face, was her only support. The treacher- 
ous water clamored below her. Matlock sat 


104 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


still, frozen to his seat, not daring to shut his 
eyes, feeling that he had ceased to breathe. 
He saw the dainty curve of the chin, for the 
face was looking up to the heaven which he 
feared might claim her ; slowly the arms came 
back; the sweet line of the mouth, with the 
smile still wreathing it, the blue eyes reflecting 
his palid face, and so the whole radiant coun- 
tenance, lighted up with a wild consciousness 
of peril, a kind of ecstasy of daring. She 
darted back and sat beside him, laughing and 
making fun of his startled appearance. He 
was not, however, in a mood to be propitiated. 

”1 consider such an act not only foolish but 
wicked,” he said, sternly, "I cannot understand 
the spirit that prompts it.” 

"Nor the thrill that accompanies it?” she 
asked, breathlessly. "Well, don’t be cross and 
I’ll confess I know it’s wicked. I only did it to 
tease you, Willard. You’re such a strange man ; 
you take every little thing so much in earnest, 
so much to heart. As for me, I like to laugh. 
Everything seems like a good joke to me.” 

"Everything, Lilian?” he questioned, turn- 
ing upon her dazzling face a look of sad 
reproach. 

"Everything,” she affirmed gayly. "Even 
you, Willard.” 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


105 


He sighed deeply and looked away. lie 
felt, indeed, that she had spoken the truth, and 
so unreasonable and contradictory were his 
feelings that he could not avoid a little senti- 
ment of bitterness in consequence. But he 
could not believe her so heartless as she would 
have him think. 

" Do you never have your moments of sad- 
ness, Lilian?” he asked. 

"How absurd!” she exclaimed. "What is 
there to be sad about? You forget I am not 
like you. Why, if I were disposed to make a 
funeral of my face, don’t you suppose I could 
find cause enough around me? Oh, yes, 
plenty, I assure you. But I won’t. I don’t 
like funeral faces, and I am not obliged to 
wear one, am I?” She was speaking in a 
tone half laughing, half serious. 

"By no means,” returned Matlock, "you are 
too fortunate if you can be always happy.” 

" Don’t say can be, say will be,” she answered 
him quite seriously. "Don’t you suppose 
there are things enough to make me cry, if I 
would rather cry than laugh? Don’t you sup- 
pose I am old enough to feel my position 
and to understand that I am avoided; that 
mothers warn their daughters not to keep my 
company, and that my playmates must be only 


106 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


boys or my own thoughts? Lately I have 
grown too old to like this childish play, and I 
have taken to my books, and my thoughts, 
and my kingdom here. But don’t you sup- 
pose I sometimes feel lonesome hy myself, — 
just a little wee bit? ” 

Matlock stared into the now earnest face 
beside him, shocked and incredulous. 

"Mothers warn their daughters against 
you ! ” he exclaimed. " I don’t understand 
you.” 

She tossed her pretty head with a slight 
defiance, and immediately became absorbed in 
braiding together some long streamers of sea- 
weed. The silence was brief, however, for she 
soon continued: 

" It’s partly superstition, I suppose, and 
partly my own fault. Maybe, they’re alto- 
gether right. I don’t know. Anyway, you must 
have seen that I am not just like other girls. 
They do say, too,” she went on, with a little 
flush and some confusion, "that I look like 
somebody else w T ho was not proper, who fright- 
ened my mother years ago, and that I’ve inher- 
ited all her wickedness with her face.” She 
set her lips tightly together. ^ " Perhaps I 
have,” she went on, twirling the flimsy braid 
about her finger. "I’m bold. I know that. 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


107 


I’m not bashful. I’m sure, I know a good 
deal ; perhaps too much for my age. And the 
old maids hate me. I know that. But the min- 
ister doesn’t,” she added, with sudden relapse 
into jocularity. " In fact, I am one of his 
very particular pets.” 

"Who told you this monstrous thing?” 
demanded Matlock, whose blood had boiled 
with indignation as she spoke. 

" Oh, I heard it,” said Lilian. " I’m not a 
baby. I hear a good deal. Don’t you sup- 
pose the children would tell me what their 
mothers have said? You don’t know what 
children are if you think they wouldn’t. 
Then at school they called me a bad girl, 
smart hut bad, — the stupid ones were 
always good, — and I haven’t a doubt that I 
was — very had. I got the name of being a 
spoiled child, — wilful, unruly, and all the 
rest. So I was. Do you know what broke up 
my attendance at the school ? ” 

" I’m sure I don’t,” said Matlock, uneasily. 

"Well, I’ll tell you,” said Lilian. "It was 
only six months ago. There was a poor man 
brought into the town sick, from a ship, and at 
first nobody knew what the matter was. And 
then, all at once, they found it was the small- 
pox, and there was a terrible time. They 


108 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


brought him out to an old tumble-down 
deserted house across the fields there, and 
they couldn’t find anybody willing to nurse 
him — everybody was so afraid and so cow- 
ardly — except one poor old woman, half deaf 
and half blind and half dead, who had had it. 
And they hired her to take care of him and 
nobody else but the doctor would go near him, 
and I thought it was cruel. I asked Aunty to 
let me go and it nearly frightened her to death, 
and grandpa was very indignant. But I 
couldn’t keep away from that house. After 
dark I wandered down there across the fields, 
and I could hear him crying for water, and 
there didn’t seem to be anybody doing any- 
thing and I couldn’t stand it. I climbed into 
the window and found the old woman fast 
asleep, and I got the water as quietly as I 
could, and gave it to the poor, dying man. It 
was so foolish to be afraid, and so heartless, 
too. But the old woman discovered me and 
she told, and while I was in school the next 
day — ” The Lily suddenly broke down and 
began to laugh. " It was so funny to see those 
faces when they found where I had been. I tell 
you, Willard, they let me have all the room to 
myself. Well, they made a great fuss about 
it and I had to stay away. But it was very 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


109 


foolish, I thought. I didn’t care for myself, 
but I wouldn’t have been the cause of making 
any of them sick for the world, and I broke 
the doctor’s bottle of carbolic acid on my 
clothes that morning, and made everybody 
believe it was an accident.” 

The humor of the whole scene overpow- 
ered her again; but her laughter quickly 
changed to gravity, and she added : " The 
poor fellow who was sick, died. He was only 
a young man, Willard, and nobody knew 
where his home was, but he may have a wife, 
or a girl who is fond of him, somewhere still 
waiting for him to return, and, — well, I’m bad 
enough to be glad I did it. But, never mind. 
I never really liked the school. The lessons 
were so simple, I had all my time for mischief. 
It’s strange, isn’t it? I never cared for my 
tasks, but I love my books.” 

" And is this crime of giving this unfortu- 
nate person a drink of water the blackest in the 
catalogue against your name?” asked Matlock. 

She looked at him with a roguish twinkle. 

" You don’t imagine for a moment, Willard, 
that I could sit here and in one short after- 
noon tell you all my sins, or that I would, if 
I could. Come, let us go and find a Walter 
Savage Landor shell, — a sinuous shell of 


no 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


pearly hue that murmurs as the ocean mur- 
murs there.” 

" I suspect you are very fond of poetry,” said 
Matlock, as they went out across the rocks. 

"I suspect I am,” she answered, gayly. 
" Especially some poetry. I’ve got a library. 
Some day I’ll show you my books.” 

"And what poet do you most admire?” 
queried Matlock, looking earnestly into the 
glowing face for a reply. 

" Well, I haven’t decided yet between ' Wee 
modest crimson-tipped flower,’ and ' Roll on, 
thou deep and dark blue ocean — roll ! ’ On the 
whole I think I like this best — ” 

She had clambered upon a convenient rock 
which raised her above her companion’s head. 
She stood there, the wind undulating the 
folds of the dress about her dainty limbs, 
her whole lithe body raised to its loftiest 
height, her face aglow, her rare blue eyes 
shining like stars, and raising one little hand 
in a commanding way looked off across the 
boundless element that dashed so near her 
feet, and recited in a clear voice — 

“ There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 

There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 

There is society where none intrudes, 

By the deep sea, and music in its roar : 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


Ill 


I love not man the less but nature more, 

From these our interviews, in which I steal, 

From all I may be, or have been before, 

To mingle with the universe, and feel, 

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.” 

“ Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean — roll ! 

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; 

Man marks the earth with ruin. His control 
Stops with the shore ; upon the watery plain 

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own, 

When for a moment like a drop of rain 

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan. 

Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.” 

She turned from the ocean to the land again 
with a burst of fresh and joyous laughter which 
the wind caught up and bore on into the air to 
mingle with the rest of nature’s gladness. 

Matlock gazed upon this vision with fast- 
beating heart. 

"A child!” he thought; "only a child, — 
thoughtless, natural and bubbling over with 
life, like a spring, — as pure and innocent as 
the sky over her head, — and I! — am I not a 
guilty wretch at my age to stay by her side, 
feeling toward her as I do and as I must? But 
how can I go away?” 

How could he indeed? The weeks wore on 
and still he lingered. 


112 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES, 


CHAPTER XI. 


THE KISS OF INNOCENCE. 

ND so the golden days glided on. Sorae- 



-lJL times Matlock fancied he had read her 
nature like an open book, and then, all at once, 
a flash of something deeper than he could un- 
derstand threw him back again into the region 
of trembling doubt. She was not always the 
same. Her mood varied as the weather does. 
There were hours together when she was really 
subdued and serious, hours when the dead 
Madeline seemed to intensify in her face; and 
then there were whole days when the demon 
of pure mischief seemed to possess her. The 
presence of this spirit inevitably betrayed itself 
by a peculiar gleam of the eyes. 

She had that gleam in her eyes very early 
in a certain morning when Matlock, standing 
beneath the arch of the gateway, saw her com- 
ing up the road, with the glory of the new day 
at her back. Matlock was admiring her walk 
long before she got near enough for him to see 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


113 


the finer lines of her expression. He had never 
seen anybody else who walked just as she did. 
Women generally, as he knew them, languidly 
propelled themselves or sailed majestically 
along like a swan or hitched onward with a 
genteel waddle; showing in nothing more the 
burden of the chains of the artificial life they 
wore than in the nature of their gait. This 
girl really walked. It was the complete poetry 
of motion. Every muscle in her lithe body was 
alive and seemed to quiver, the superabundance 
of life that was there, life in its most attractive 
form, thrilling even the inanimate garments that 
she wore, till they grew eloquent with the story 
of a peerless shape and grace; and Matlock’s 
head became hot with a flood that nearly 
blinded him. 

" What a lazy man ! ” she cried, when she 
came near enough. "Oh! what a lazy man! 
Why, I have been up for hours and heard the 
birds singing their first songs and seen the sun 
rising out of the ocean and you are yet rubbing 
your eyes.” 

She came into the house like a great burst 
of sunlight and stopped Mrs. Togg’s querulous 
complaint about the delayed breakfast with a 
kiss and afterwards saluted Mr. Togg in a 
similar manner. Matlock had followed her 
8 


114 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


and stood watching her. He had never kissed 
her. It would have been very easy for him to 
have done so ; but he would have felt such a 
liberty something of a sacrilege. And now 
she came toward him with mischief in her eye 
and put her little hands on his arms and looked 
up into his face and pouted her ravishing lips, 
as if she would be kissed. Matlock thrilled to 
his very finger tips, but he did not dare even 
then, and with a merry peal of laughter at the 
gravity of his face she darted away and sat 
down to her breakfast. 

In another half hour she was ready to fly 
away again. 

" Are you not coming out this morning? ” 
she queried; and led Matlock forth, down the 
solitary road to the rocky shore where the 
spray was flying and the fresh breeze helping 
in the huge waves that broke and roared and 
ran up among the stones. She was laughing 
and singing and reciting bits of poetry all the 
way. Matlock somehow felt like a big school- 
boy who is asked to join a game with a flock of 
little girls and would like to but does not know 
how. He contrasted himself, grave and digni- 
fied and earnest, with emotions of tremendous 
import raging within him, and this gay, blithe- 
some creature whose griefs and serious thoughts 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


115 


he imagined to be as ephemeral as the fleecy 
vapors he saw dissolving in the azure over- 
head, and he felt most keenly the incongruous 
nature of that passion which had taken such 
entire possession of him. 

The Lily danced along, now at his side and 
now in front of him, and ever and anon glan- 
cing at him with a look half comical, half wicked, 
which he could not analyze. Several times she 
made a motion as if to come very close to him, 
but seemed to hesitate, and then all at once she 
burst out with a most superlative inquiry that 
almost turned her lover to a statue where he 
stood. 

" Willard, why didn’t you kiss me this morn- 
ing? Are you afraid? ” 

She came very close to him, mimicking some 
mincing gait, because it was her nature to do 
something, however irrelevant, looked roguishly 
into his startled face; and then, suddenly spring- 
ing up, she wound about him like a sylph and 
he felt the shock of the momentary pressure 
of her warm lips on his own. He uttered a cry 
and started back. His arms dropped helplessly 
to his side. A great rush of terror and confu- 
sion dismayed him. She laughed and ran away, 
looking back over her shoulder with a merry 
countenance. 


116 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


Did she understand what she had done? 
Did she dream of the flash of fire that she had 
sent darting through his veins? Despite the 
shock to his sense of propriety, Matlock said 
to himself that the action was as innocent of 
harm as that of the fresh breeze which played 
with the locks about his brow. 

She came back very soon, skipping lightly 
from stone to stone and crying out: "Oh, 
you good old soul, what a beautiful bronze 
Apollo you would make ! ” struck a benign 
and smiling attitude just before him. Mat- 
lock did not laugh. He felt too deeply. 
He knew that his cheeks burned and that 
his voice trembled. He endeavored to be 
severe. 

" Are you too much of a heathen to regard 
appearances, Lilian? ” he said. " What if 
somebody should see you?” 

"See me!” she echoed. "Why, I never 
heard that there was any harm in kissing chil- 
dren or old gentlemen! Hot that you are such 
a very old gentleman, Willard, but you must 
acknowledge that comparatively you are well 
advanced. And just at that moment you did 
look so antique and sedate ! ” 

nevertheless, there was something in her 
eye that did not seem quite like innocence. 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


117 


" Lilian,” he said, gravely, " you forget that 
you are a woman and that I have not yet 
reached middle age.” 

" Dear me,” she said with a little laugh that 
did not sound quite as spontaneous as usual, 
"if that is the way you feel about it, I’ll never 
do it again.” 

There was a very awkward silence. She 
walked at his side. Matlock felt that she 
looked up, once and again, wistfully, into his 
face. For the first time since he had known her 
the sparkling flow of spirits was checked. She 
ceased to be gay. She was grave and thought- 
ful. 

The afternoon was a failure. The silence 
did not continue. There soon sprang up a 
rambling conversation, but it was forced on 
both sides. They had been so free before and 
now some barrier seemed all at once erected 
between them. 

Soon after supper the Lily slipped away and 
Matlock did not see her again during the even- 
ing. The next morning her chair at the table 
was vacant. Mrs. Bathrow was more exas- 
perated than frightened and pronounced it "one 
of the child's freaks.” " She’s took a notion to 
get up and see the sunrise on that everlasting 
old rock,” she said. " As if she hadn’t seen 


118 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


that same thing times out of mind for the 
last ten years.” 

After breakfast Matlock wandered down 
the dewy road in the fresh morning air. He 
had been troubled with unrest himself all 
night and he felt somehow a wretchedness 
which the brisk and bracing day that was 
springing into a golden being had no power 
to overcome. , 

The beach was apparently deserted. He 
was, however, impressed with a belief that he 
should find her. He walked on down the 
shore, springing from rock to rock, and mak- 
ing his slow way among the many impedi- 
ments that broke the continuity of the path. 
Coming suddenly about a bowlder he met her, 
face to face. She looked at him as if he had 
startled her very much, struggled furtively 
against it, and then openly and beyond ques- 
tion, burst into tears. 

Two things, either of which was quite suffi- 
cient in itself to do so, startled Matlock. The 
first was the vision of the face of the dead 
Madeline that he had seen staring at him with 
round, fearful eyes when he came upon her; 
the second was the extraordinary display of 
emotion. He stood still and stared at the Lily 
helplessly till with quick resolution she turned 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


119 


and fled away up the beach. He followed her 
slowly, but when he came in sight of the nook 
into which she seemed to have disappeared he 
could not find her. 

It was long into the morning while he was 
reclining discontentedly upon a vantage point 
on table rock, still vainly waiting to catch a 
glimpse of her, that a soft touch was laid on 
his shoulder and he found that the Lily had 
crept up the side of the bowlder unnoticed. 

"I — I am going to apologize to you — Wil 
— Mr. Matlock,” she began, "for what I did 
yesterday. I have thought about it and I have 
come to the conclusion that you were quite 
right. I did forget that I was a woman and 
that you was a gentleman.” 

" Can we not let that be forgotten ? ” asked 
Matlock, nervously. " I assure you I remem- 
ber nothing about it.” 

"I — I would not care about it so much,” 
she went on, " if I did not think that perhaps 
you might get an idea that that was the way 
I did to everybody.” 

"I assure you!” cried Matlock, "I have not 
wronged you with any such thought.” 

"You must know that I am a great deal too 
thoughtless and impulsive, a great deal too 
fond of doing daring things, like venturing 


120 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


farther out on a dangerous rock than any of 
the rest would dare to go. I always had that 
spirit, even when I was very young, and I 
suppose I’ve had my own way too much in 
everything. That’s what I did yesterday, 
and I’m ashamed of it, — and that’s what I 
came to say.” 

She had stood behind him since she came and 
he, appreciating her feelings, did not seek to 
see her face; but he heard the unsteady voice 
and the plaintive catching of the breath. He 
honored her for her frankness, but he felt 
utterly incapable of comprehending her. 
What did she mean by daring? If she had 
been twenty instead of sixteen and had had 
some experience with the world Matlock would 
have felt a dim suspicion that he listened to 
the words of a venturesome coquette; but with 
the halo of romance about her, considering who 
and what she seemed, it was more natural to 
look upon her as a being but half mortal, born 
of the roseate tints that flush the sea at sun- 
rise, divinely beautiful, but without a human 
heart, whose kiss meant the enslavement of 
the hapless mortal whose lips met hers. He 
had read a legend like this in some forgotten 
poem. The kiss was the kiss of death, for the 
poor victim followed the charmer about with 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


121 


aching heart till she led him beneath the 
waves. Ah! in his case it did not need the 
kiss to seal his doom. He felt that henceforth 
his life was hers. Hopeless of ever knowing 
anything nearer and sweeter than the melan- 
choly bliss of an unuttered, secret love, he 
would go through life consecrated to her. 

With this sad consciousness it Avas hard to 
tear himself away from Surfport. He lingered 
long after there was any excuse for lingering. 
The hours were so brief, the weeks so like the 
singing of a song that could not be heard 
enough, and this dream, this incongruous 
dream whose central figure was a child whom 
he could, by no possibility, separate entirely 
from the past and make a stranger to himself, 
who seemed sometimes the woman who had 
sinned and suffered, the woman older than 
himself, but now transformed and purified and 
set as a star in the firmament, — this dream was 
so very sweet it seemed like suicide to wake. 
He had an unpleasant impression that when 
he went away his conscience would not allow 
him to come back. 

And so he lingered through July and Au- 
gust, — stood upon the rock with her in the 
morning and saw the cold gray sky hardly 
distinct from the grayer sea, growing brighter 


122 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


and more rosy and then of a sudden the 
splendid flood of color pouring its liquid fires 
across the swelling floor of the ocean and 
beheld the morning; turned about at night, 
still with her, upon. the self-same rock, and 
saw that sadder glory of the dying day build- 
ing a transient heaven in the west. And every 
day his heart was heavier. He saw himself 
one swift step nearer — the inevitable. 


T H E ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


123 


CHAPTER XII. 

MR. TOGG FRIGHTENS MATLOCK. 

T HE sun did not always shine at Surfport. 

Often a dense fog rolling in from the 
sea obscured the prospect, and not infrequently 
it stormed. One afternoon when the rain 
poured down and confined the members of the 
Batlirow household to the shelter of its roof, 
the Lily showed Matlock the treasures of the 
roomy chamber that most particularly of all 
in the old homestead she called her own. It 
was a treasure house inexhaustible, and Mat- 
lock wms quite overwhelmed. Costly shawls, 
rare and beautiful ornaments, both personal 
and otherwise, which her father had sent her 
from over the sea; a rare collection of shells and 
stones and marine plants, which she herself had 
made ; a perfect wealth of pictures and books 
which she had managed to get through an 
alliance for that purpose with the petty dealer 
of the village, and a thousand and one things 
of curiosity and interest. Lilian said that she 


124 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


had rarely shown them to anybody and that 
he ought to feel very satisfied and proud of the 
distinction conferred upon him. 

But the feeling which swayed him was very 
far from that of pride. When she had stood 
in the doorway and held open the door and 
said to him: " Come in,” he had felt the 
breathlessness and the heart-beat of the pil- 
grim who for the first time enters the sanctu- 
ary that contains the shrine at which he came 
to worship. And when he crossed the thresh- 
old and glanced round upon the sweet abode 
of purity, the little white bed where she slept ; 
the great old bureau with the wide and short 
mirror atop which had reflected so many times 
the virgin charms that profane eyes had never 
gazed upon; the little chair by the window 
where she sat and read; the thousand little 
articles scattered everywhere that she was 
accustomed daily to handle, and gaze upon, 
or make use of in some peculiarly familiar 
way; when he saw all this, more guilty in the 
secret of his love than ever, he was ashamed. 
To come in here with such a feeling concealed 
in his bosom was indeed a profanation. 

But the Lily was a very long way from 
understanding such a sentiment as this. She 
bustled about calling his attention to every- 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


125 


thing at once, and more in a minute than he 
could possibly look at in an hour, and filled 
all the place with the ring of her merry laugh, 
and the sunshine of her presence. And truly, 
the room was beautiful, with or without her. 
She had furnished it to suit her taste and her 
taste was limited by what she knew best and 
loved most. So she had made it charming for 
its very simplicity and quiet homeliness. And 
she Avas evidently proud of her work. 

"Here,” she said, "I am a perfect despotic 
empress! There is not one soul in the world 
who dares come in here without my permis- 
sion, not even Aunty. As for grandpa, I 
really believe no power could drag him across 
the threshold. He has actually such a foolish 
superstitious veneration for this room as you 
can’t conceive.” 

" I can conceive it,” returned Matlock, ear- 
nestly. " It is very natural.” 

"For Mr. Togg, who is almost my father?” 
she queried, with a roguish sidelong glance. 

"For anybody,” said Matlock, with convic- 
tion. 

"And yet,” she went on, "there is nothing 
here at all ghostly or gloomy.” Her tone 
changed abruptly. “Oh! I forgot. Yes, there 
is something very mysterious, and I must show 


126 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


it to you. If it gives you such a turn as it did 
grandpa the day I brought it home I shall 
conclude that it is indeed a weird and awful 
affair.” 

"What is it? ” asked Matlock. She did not 
reply. She was rummaging in the depth of a 
great closet. A moment after she issued forth, 
concealing something behind her. She was 
endeavoring, in mere sport, to look very 
solemn ; and her face at that moment was the 
face that had faded from the eyes of men six- 
teen years before. Matlock felt nervous and 
excited, without apparent cause. Suddenly 
she brought her hands before her and held up 
to his view two garments, crying out in a 
sepulchral tone: 

" Behold the mystery ! ” 

Matlock felt a sudden chill. Would he have 
known if she had not led up to it in this way; 
if the associations had not been as they were? 
I cannot say; but he did know in an instant 
that they were the garments that the dead 
Madeline had worn the night she came in out 
of the storm to die in the old arm-chair before 
the fire. To see this successor to whom a mir- 
acle had transmitted her face guarding these 
garments in a recess where no one dared to 
come, none the less effectively because she 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


127 


knew it not, gave Matlock an indescribable 
shock. She looked at him and her arms fell 
to her side. Her mirth changed to amaze- 
ment. 

"Why, Willard, you are just as pale as Mr. 
Togg was ! ” she exclaimed, and turning from 
him gazed upon the pitiful memorials with a 
face of half-terrified wonder. 

"Where did you find them?” gasped Mat- 
lock. 

"Why, that’s the only strange part of it,” 
said the Lily. " I found them on the shore 
where the waves had cast them up, sewed in 
a little hag and weighted down with sand. I 
would have shown them to the people in the 
town, but Mr. Togg plead with me that I should 
not, and so I brought them here. See how old 
and flimsy they are! They must have been in 
the water years. The bag was badly broken 
. where it had beaten against the rocks. You 
never could have known them. Why do you 
look at them so strangely? ” 

" Because I feel somewhat ill,” said Matlock, 
hurriedly ; " not because there is anything re- 
markable in the clothes. Certainly — you can 
see yourself how absurd that would be. Any 
one might have lost them, — thrown them away. 
Really, it is very oppressive here with all the 


128 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


windows shut. I must get the air. I must 
indeed.” 

" Put on your hat and step into the porch,” 
said Lilian, with great solicitude. " You really 
look very ill.” 

Matlock went down stairs. Ilis hand shook 
upon the baluster. He walked the length of 
the hall, put on his hat and opened the door 
to go out. The door of Mr. Togg’s shop, 
which was immediately beside him, stood ajar. 
It suddenly opened wide and the old man, 
quaking in mortal terror and seemingly in 
great agony of mind and body, reached forth 
and grasped Matlock with a frenzied grip by 
both his arms. 

" Willard,” he burst out, in a hoarse whisper, 
"she has shown them to you?” 

Matlock faltered a startled affirmative. 

Mr. Togg said no more. He exerted all his 
strength, fairly dragged Matlock across the 
threshold of his dingy shop, forced him against 
the wall there, locked the door, put the key in 
his pocket, and stood up with his back against 
the closed portal, as if he had some vague 
notion that the young man might be inclined 
to batter it down and make his escape. 

" You — you shall hear me, Willard,” said 
the old man in a breathless voice. " You shall 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


129 


hear me.” There was some trouble with his 
articulation and tears began to chase each 
other rapidly down his wrinkled face. 

" 1 knew it,” he went on, " I knew the day 
she found them, sooner or later, it would come 
out. I tried to steal up in the night and take 
them away. I never could cross that thresh- 
old. Willard, there’s a fate here, I don’t know 
how to cope with. Oh, dear me! I have suf- 
fered a good deal, and I am a very feeble old 
man ! ” 

Matlock pitied him, but astonishment ren- 
dered him speechless. 

"You have seen it all!” cried Mr. Togg. 
" You were there that night. You were with 
me when I threw the bundle from the rocks; 
you have thrust your finger through the bullet 
holes; you understand; you are going to de- 
nounce me.” 

"Mr. Togg!” Matlock ejaculated, "Mr. 
Togg!” He was utterly unable to say an- 
other word, but there was a world of terror, 
and distress, in that cry. The old man looked 
at him fearfully and advanced nearer, with a 
beseeching gesture. Matlock pushed hi"', 
away. 

" Don’t cast me off! ” Mr. Togg pleaded. 
" Jt was not T, but that infernal compound ! my 

9 


130 


THE KOMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


hand but not my heart ! "Why should I wish to 
kill her? I did not even know her. Oh, if you 
knew what a weight and an agony it has been 
to me all these years you would not wonder 
that I should plead that I have been punished 
already all my strength ean bear.” 

" Mr. Togg,” said Matlock, " I cannot un- 
derstand you. Tell me the whole. Do not 
omit a syllable.” 

" I will, Willard, I will,” cried the terrified 
old man. All his mannerism had vanished. lie 
was no longer the silent and taciturn Togg, 
but a weak and trembling suppliant, who could 
not find words enough to plead his case. 

" I had been smoking the substitute. You 
know how I had been smoking the substitute, 
and there had never been the shadow of a 
warning. How could I know that such an 
innocent compound could conceal such a 
horrid possibility? I tell you, Willard, as I 
hope for mercy hereafter I don’t know when 
I turned the chair around. I don’t know 
when I fired the shot. The last thing I saw 
was the girl opening her mouth to speak. I 
came to feeling dizzy and surprised to see you 
and the doctor back so soon. Even then I 
never dreamed. I never imagined. Would I 
have spoken to you about it if I had? Say, 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


131 


Willard, would I have asked you what I did 
that night? It was not till morning when I 
came down and found my pistol thrown into 
the corner with one barrel discharged that I 
got some inkling of the awful truth. Even 
then I only suspected. I knew the doctor w~as 
careful and he was not likely to make a mis- 
take about what made her die ; but when I 
came to the work which my profession forced 
on me there I found the little stain and the 
wound below the breast. There was no blood, 
only a slight stain; but I knew that she had 
died by a bullet from that pistol. I had known 
nothing of it. I was innocent in my own 
mind; but would anybody else believe me? 
Did anybody ever hear of a smoke that would 
deprive a man of his reason and make him kill 
a fellow-creature and then suddenly leave him 
clear in mind again? Oh, Willard, I was 
cowardly! I let her be buried and never 
spoke; but was I wrong? Would they be- 
lieve my story? Do you believe it? ” 

Mr. Togg stopped suddenly. His whole 
life seemed to hang on the question he had 
asked. Matlock looked at him, crouching in 
terror before him, and staring at him with a face 
of agony. He reached down and raised the old 
man to his feet. 


132 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


"Yes, Mr. Togg,” he said, emphatically. " I 
do believe you.” 

The old man stared at him, incredulously. 
Gradually the amazed look faded; he burst 
out with some unintelligible words and sobbed 
like a child. 

"Nevertheless,” said Matlock, sternly, "you 
have done very wrong.” 

" Y ery wrong,” affirmed Mr. Togg. 

" You have not acted like a man,” continued 
Matlock. 

" Yery true,” said Mr. Togg. 

"I would have given the world to have 
known of this before long years had placed it 
beyond the reasonable possibility of an inves- 
tigation.” 

" But could I face a trial, a possible con- 
demnation? ” exclaimed Mr. Togg, appalled at 
the very thought. "Would you have me put 
my life in jeopardy for — for nothing? ” 

"Nothing!” echoed Matlock. "The truth 
would have been something! ” 

" The truth,” said Mr. Togg. " The truth is 
what I have told you.” 

" And she did not do the deed'herself ? ” ex- 
claimed Matlock. 

Mr. Togg shook his head mournfully. 

" Old ground, old ground,” he said. " There 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


133 


was no loop-hole for me to escape. The pistol 
was fired across the room ; otherwise the dress 
would have shown the marks of powder; the 
wound would have been in the right side, not 
the left.” 

" And could that pistol have been fired and 
no one in the house hear it!” cried Matlock 
incredulously. 

" It was,” said Togg, briefly. " Willard, you 
are in the presence of a mystery. Let it rest.” 

" Humph ! ” muttered Matlock. He had be- 
gun excitedly to pace the room. The old man 
watched him with apprehension. 

" Mr. Togg,” said Matlock at last, " have you 
still a sample of the substitute?” 

"What are you thinking of doing?” asked 
the old man, anxiously. 

"I am going to take it to a physician and 
have him analyze it.” 

" What good will that do? ” cried Mr. Togg, 
" I know what is in it.” 

" Mr. Togg,” said Matlock, sternly, " don’t 
throw any obstructions in my path. There 
are possibilities and there are impossibilities 
in science. On the answer to the questions 
which I shall put the man of science who will 
examine the sample I shall submit to him will 
depend in some degree whether or not I can 


134 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


■continue to believe the story that you have told 
me and which, till then, I shall, for your sake, 
credit.” 

"Not here ! ” pleaded Mr. Togg, "for heaven’s 
sake don’t show it to anybody here! They 
might suspect me ! ” 

Matlock cast upon the terror-stricken wretch 
a glance of contempt. 

"I’ll take it — to London, if that will be 
far enough,” he said, "hut I shall do as I have 
said.” 

A soft voice was heard outside the door 
calling anxiously Matlock’s Christian name. 

" Not a word,’.’ said Matlock impressively to 
Mr. Togg, "not a word about this at any 
time before her. You understand.” 

" Oh ! thank you, Willard, thank you,” mur- 
mured Mr. Togg, endeavoring to embrace 
his knees in his gratitude. Then trembling 
he arose, opened the door and let him out. 


THE KOMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


135 


CHAPTEK XIII. 

THE HIATUS. 

T HIS rainy day at Surfport put an end to 
Matlock’s hesitating stay. In two days 
he took his departure. The Lily rode with 
him in the wagon with Mr. Togg to the sta- 
tion. Mr. Togg never uttered a word during 
the long ride. Even the Lily was disinclined 
to talk. Matlock knew that she was very 
sorry that he was going. She did not need to 
say so; her whole demeanor spoke for her. 

"The grief of a child who loses a playmate ? ” 
thought Matlock, sadly. 

At the station he shook hands with Mr. 
Togg; the train thundered up and waited; 
he turned to part with her. He took her little 
hand and looked into her upturned face. She 
smiled ruefully, and told him to be sure to 
write to her. He hesitated; she pouted, and 
he kissed her of his own accord; and with the 
fragrance of this second kiss accompanying 
him he sped away on his long journey. 


136 


THE ROMAMCE OF THE LILIES. 


Now the time for reflection had come, and 
he did indeed reproach himself. He said that 
he must never come back. To love a child at 
his age! It was monstrous, unnatural. Youth 
was for youth, the spring could never wed the 
winter. It was preposterous that she could 
ever return his affection ; but that, indeed, was 
not the question. Suppose he married her, his 
hair would have turned white before she 
reached her prime. The mirror, indeed, did 
not return to his gaze the image of a patriarch. 
He was in the full vigor of his youth, younger 
by reason of his Puritanic habits of life than 
many of his countrymen were at twenty-four. 
Vendelle, for instance, but four years his 
senior, seemed twice his age. He caught 
himself presenting this argument to his own 
mind more than once, and was almost angry 
at this indication that some part of his nature, 
loth to accept the inevitable, insisted upon 
indulging in what he considered an unmanly 
hope. 

There was no danger of his forgetting her, 
even if he had been less in love with her, for 
she did not forget him. Every week she 
wrote to him long, delightful letters of the 
most natural, enthusiastic and unconventional 
sort, letters that would have been a curiosity 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


137 


anywhere, letters as wild and free as the dash 
of the water against the rock on which she 
always wrote them- and he answered them in 
the same spirit. It was the correspondence of 
an indulgent uncle and a madcap niece. 

Matlock passed most of the next nine months 
in London. The sample of the substitute he 
took directly to Vendelle, because he knew 
that Vendelle had upon his list of friends a 
man very eminent in medical science, not a 
practising physician, but a learned man whose 
name was at the bottom of many a scholarly 
article in the reviews of the time, and whose 
reputation was national. He told Vendelle 
merely the theory upon which Mr. Togg had 
proceeded, and was very careful to say noth- 
ing about Mr. Togg’s personal interest in the 
matter. The question to be asked of the emi- 
nent medical man was simply this — What 
might be the effect of smoking this compound 
upon one who had become addicted to its use? 
Could it by any possibility throw him into a 
fit of insanity? 

Vendelle reported to Matlock that he had 
given the sample to the physician and that he 
had been informed that it would necessarily 
take some time for experiment before an opinion 
could be rendered. Weeks passed, and Mat- 


138 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


lock grew a little impatient of the delay. Yen- 
del le, however, assured him that the physician 
was not neglecting the matter, and that the re- 
sults would be more certain and satisfactory be- 
cause of the care that was being taken. Thus 
Yendelle spoke, from time to time, and up to 
a certain memorable night in May no further 
definite progress had been reported. 

On that night Yendelle came as usual, 
toward nine o’clock, to pass the remainder of 
the evening in Matlock’s chambers. The 
air was a trifle chilly and there was a fire in 
the grate. Yendelle had brought his favorite 
Indian pipe with him. It was a quaint affair 
whose bowl was carved into the misshapen, 
distorted features of an uncouth divinity ; 
something like the face of a genie which Mat- 
lock had encountered in fairy literature in early 
life and had never forgotten. Yendelle sat in 
his favorite chair by the fire and with languid 
interest filled this bowl, glancing once and 
again, with a quizzical expression, at Matlock 
who was overhauling the contents of a trunk 
at the other end of the room. 

"Matlock,” said Yendelle, "lam going to 
startle you.” 

" Ah? ” said Matlock. 

"Yes,” said Yendelle. "I am going to Hew 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


139 


York ; both myself, Vendelle, Mrs. Vendelle 
and the sea-lion, Bathrow.” 

” Well, you have startled me,” said Matlock 
ceasing his operations, suddenly. " What is 
the reason for this exodus? ” 

” The reason for it,” repeated Vendelle, light- 
ing his pipe with an ember that threw a crimson 
stain upon his pale face, — " the reason is that 
they have begun an active campaign to marry 
me. I told you it would be so. They have 
settled it, the wise fools, among themselves 
Tt only needs now the consent of the victim^ 
— not me, — the other victim. I have had 
no official notice, but I perfectly under- 
stand. If she is satisfactory and does not 
object a respectable sum of money will be 
settled upon me the day I marry. I hate very 
much to play the part of the worm that gnaws 
its way into the heart of the fair fruit; but 
what am I to do? I am in debt and they know 
it. I can’t work, and they know that too. I 
must have money. They have taken every- 
thing into consideration. And so it is practi- 
cally settled beforehand. The girl’s father 
wants to benefit the girl. My father wants to 
reform me. And between them both they will 
succeed in killing her and making me uncom- 
fortable.” 


140 THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 

Vendelle paused to puff his pipe into a glow. 
Matlock looked at him with a very serious 
face. 

"Are you really in earnest, Vendelle?” 

Vendelle laughed grimly, and queried: — 

"Do I seem jocular? ” 

"It is absolutely infamous ! ” ejaculated Mat- 
lock. " Who is the gil l.” 

" Bathrow’s daughter.’’ 

Matlock sat very still upon the low cushion 
before the trunk. It Avas several minutes be- 
fore he answered. When he did so, his lips 
parted with a parched sound, as if he had been 
burning with a fever. 

" Do you know, Vendelle, that this girl, this 
child, is not yet seventeen years old?” 

"Vendelle mentioned that she was young. 
You didn’t think him quite capable of yoking 
me to a spinster? ” 

"And you are nearly forty! If you had 
met her mother before Mr. Bathrow did, she 
might have been your daughter.” 

"It is sad,” said Vendelle, dryly. "But it 
isn’t necessary to harrow me. I am sufficiently 
alive to the enormity of the proposition. One 
of these days there will be something that 
somebody will regret. It may be the elder 
Vendelle. It may be me. It may be both of 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


141 


us. As for Bathrow I have no words to waste 
on him He hasn’t spent three days in his 
daughter’s society in sixteen years. He isn’t 
so well acquainted with her as one of the rag- 
ged urchins in her village streets. He is a 
beast. You might naturally inquire, then, why 
Vendelle makes such a choice for me, when 
some very good English families would be 
open to him. I can only say that Yendelle 
loves Bathrow as much as he loves his dog or 
me or as much as he loves anything and that 
he wants to do Bathrow an honor, — just think 
of that ! An honor ! — by uniting the two 
families. Bathrow and he are intimates and 
between them they have hatched this precious 
plan. Delightful, isn’t it?” 

Matlock rose up very self-contained and cold 
and approached Yendelle. He opened his 
mouth to speak, but started back forgetting all 
that he wanted to say, under the shock of a 
discovery. The strong, peculiar odor of the 
smoke from Vendelle’s pipe saluted his nostrils. 
He knew it. It was the substitute. 

"Yendelle !” he cried. "You are smoking 
the compound ! ” 

Yendelle answered him very quietly and 
without emotion: "Yes” 

Matlock looked at him in stupefaction. 


142 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


"And moreover,” continued Vendelle slowly, 
between his puffs, — " moreover, I have been 
smoking it somewhat diligently for three 
months past.” 

"You have deceived me!” exclaimed Mat- 
lock. 

"I have,” said Vendelle. "Don’t be angry, 
friend. It will do no good. Our chemist made 
his report to me three months ago. Stop a 
minute. I won’t trust my memory. I have 
written it in my diary. I will read it.” 

As he fumbled in his pocket for the book, 
Matlock noticed that his hand trembled, that 
his head, too, was unsteady, as is the head of 
an old man who has lived beyond his time. 

" Here. Here it is,” said Vendelle presently, 
producing the book, and with difficulty finding 
the page. " My eyes are poor. You may read 
it.” 

Matlock took the book and saw written in 
pencil, under a date in February, this: — 

" A compound of opium and several common 
weeds. Noneof the elements poisonous. Can’t 
imagine temporary insanity from its use; hid 
pronounce it unquestionably and emphatically 
unhealthy. A steady employment would he 
likely to impair the faculties, obscure the 
memory and stupefy the mind. After a time 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


143 


its use would become a habit difficult if not 
impossible to break and it would end in pros- 
tration or death” 

Matlock looked from the book to Vendelle 
who, without noticing him, continued quietly 
to smoke. 

" Vendelle! ” he demanded, "are you mad?” 

"Not mad,” returned Vendelle, " only tired. 
Tired of this endless farce called life; this 
miserable paltry humbug that isn’t worth living. 
Not being bred a butcher I can’t kill myself, 
and besides I am too lazy. I never can bear 
to be in haste about anything. I got over that 
in my youth I told you, friend. I would have 
this little whim of mine gratified a very long 
time ago and so I have done. Our chemist has 
furnished me with the formula; I have become 
my own manufacturer, and am ready to supply 
the market in quantities to suit.” Vendelle 
waved his pipe languidly before him. " Glori- 
ous invention of your patient American friend ! ” 
he said. " Stupefaction ! I would not object 
to living if I could no longer realize. It’s the 
damnably distinct way that I continue to rec- 
ollect every little circumstance in my past 
that makes me doubt the correctness of our 
friend, the chemist’s, conclusions.” 

Matlock had stood aghast till now. He 


144 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


could ho longer restrain himself. He rushed 
forward, wrested the pipe from Vended e and 
threw it into the grate. Vendelle became 
slightly flushed and rose from his chair. The 
two men stood facing each other. 

"Vendelle,” cried Matlock, "you shall not 
go on in this way, — not if I can prevent it. 
And I will prevent it. What folly is this? Will 
you transform yourself into an idiot? That 
is carrying your cynicism a deal too far. I tell 
you, you must stop. If you continue, I shall see 
that it is known and prevented.” 

" Take care,” said Vendelle, trembling very 
much. "Don’t tempt me too far, or I shall 
say three words which will break our friend- 
ship into bits as you have broken my pipe. 
My poor pipe! I never can replace it.” He 
seemed suddenly to forget his anger in sorrow 
for the loss of his pipe which had been badly 
shattered. lie sank back into his chair. Mat- 
lock still stood over him. 

"Vendelle,” he said, earnestly, "I want you 
to promise me that you will never touch this 
wicked substance again.” 

"Go away,” said Vendelle, impatiently. 
" You irritate me.” 

Matlock began nervously to pace the floor. 
Vendelle still sat looking at the fire. Presently 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


145 


he spoke and with a degree of nonchalance 
that seemed almost like drowsiness. 

" Matlock,” he said, " you and I have been 
friends. I have a mind to tell you — tell you — 
something.” 

There were very strange breaks between his 
words that caused Matlock to pause in his walk 
and look at him, apprehensively 

"But not — ” Vendelle began again. 
" IsTot — ” 

There was a sudden silence in the room. 
Matlock waited for Vended o to proceed. 
Vendelle sat motionless in his chair, appar- 
ently looking at the fire. 

" Well V ” said Matlock. 

Vendelle did not speak. He did not move. 
Matlock sprang toward him. He was sitting, 
as he had sat, perfectly natural in his posture, 
his eyes still fixed upon the fire ; but they were 
not the eyes of intelligence. There was some- 
thing dilated and strange about their appear- 
ance that frightened Matlock. He took hold 
of his friend’s shoulder and shook him. He 
found him without resistance, and yielding to 
his touch. With growing fear, Matlock grasped 
his wrist. The hand was warm and the pulse 
was beating slowly. Matlock felt a horror 
creeping over him. His friend seemed in a 
10 


146 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


trance. He shook him ; he loosened his cra- 
vat ; he sprinkled water in his face ; he did 
everything in his power to bring a sign of 
understanding into that pale aristocratic face. 
Everything without avail. The minutes flew 
by. Thoroughly alarmed, Matlock let the 
unconscious man sink back into the chair and 
started to call assistance. He had reached the 
door when a voice from the chair stopped him. 
It was "Vendell e saying in a sleepy voice : 

" Hot — not to-night.” 

He had finished the sentence begun many 
minutes before. In the interim apparently 
consciousness had been dead. He had not 
thought at all. 

Matlock came back, trembling. 

" How do you feel? ” he questioned, eagerly. 

"Sleepy,” said Vendelle, looking at him, 
vaguely. "As I say, I will not tell you to- 
night. Some other time, Matlock, some other 
time.” 

He closed his eyes, yawned, and looked 
again at Matlock. 

"What the deuce are you staring at?” he 
questioned, with a slight show of interest. 
"Is there anything extraordinary about me?” 

"Don’t you know?” said Matlock. " What 
have you been doing for the last five minutes ? ” 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


147 


" Having an altercation with you,” answered 
Vendelle, languidly. w Hello ! who’s been un- 
buttoning my cravat? And the chair — the 
chair has moved ! Matlock, what is this? ” 

He was very much excited and the shaking 
of the head had come on again harder than 
ever. 

" How, Vendelle,” said Matlock with author- 
ity, " you listen to me and if you ever smoke 
that infernal compound again you are not fit to 
be at large.” 

Vendelle listened and when Matlock had 
finished he promised to forego the substitute 
in future. He went away feeling ill and 
seemingly alarmed. 


148 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER XIY. 

A RECREANT SUITOR. 

I T would be too much to say that Matlock 
saw a solution of the problem that was 
puzzling him in Yendelle’s strange experience. 
He was not at all sure that because the inveter- 
ate smoking of tjie substitute had affected Ten- 
delle in so remarkable a manner, it must have 
resulted similarly in the case of Mr. Togg. 
He was enough of a physician to know that 
such a phenomenon as he had witnessed was 
very unusual and that its occurrence might be 
owing quite as much to peculiar cerebral con- 
ditions in the individual as to the nature of the 
drug which had produced it. He knew that 
yendelle’s experience was not unprecedented. 
He had read in some scientific work of a well- 
attested case of a man who began a sentence 
in the morning and finished it in the afternoon, 
— the intervening hours having been passed 
under the care of friends who were endeavor- 
ing to relieve him of a depression of the bones 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


149 


of the skull resulting from a fall. He was 
aware that the pressure of a physician’s fore- 
finger upon the head of a surgical patient in a 
hospital had been made to produce the same 
phenomenon, — an absolute blank of conscious- 
ness during the continuance of the pressure, 
and the consequent lack of knowledge on the 
part of the patient that any time had intervened. 
But was this what had happened to Mr. Togg? 
Upon any theory, there were elements in the 
case which prevented Matlock from feeling 
any confidence that he had reached the true 
solution of the mystery. He did not inform 
Mi’. Togg of what he had learned concerning 
the substitute. He permitted the matter to 
remain as it was for the present, but, never- 
theless, he thought about it much. 

The programme for the American visit 
which Vendelle had announced to Matlock was 
not carried out quite to the letter. Instead of 
the family party which was to have gone over 
to inspect the Lily, the elder Vendelle and Mr. 
Bathrow formed the exclusive committee. In 
less than a fortnight from the time of Ven- 
delle’s conversation with Matlock, they left 
England. Matlock had various sources of in- 
formation respecting their visit to America, 
and lie learned, in the course of time, that they 


150 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


passed two weeks at Surfport. The elder Yen- 
deile was thoroughly charmed with his friend’s 
fair daughter and was heard to remark in his 
bluff way to Bathrow : "Makings of a fine woman 
there, Bathrow; very fine woman. Damme, if 
I was young enough, I’d marry her myself.” 

Lilian wrote to Matlock then, telling him 
that Mr. Yendelle had invited her to come to 
England and that her father had spoken to her 
seriously about marriage. He had said to her 
that she was rapidly nearing womanhood and 
would soon be old enough to have a home of her 
own. When she had told him that she was 
quite satisfied with the dear old home which 
she had always known, he had frowned and 
said he hoped she would not disappoint him. 

To Lilian this significant speech sounded 
very mysterious. To Matlock it was part 
and parcel of an incredible outrage which he 
really was too charitable to believe would ever 
be carried out, but which it made him angry to 
think was even contemplated. Nevertheless, 
events were certainly progressing in that 
direction. Philip Yendelle was requested by 
his father to go to New York on a matter of 
business. He was not told that he was ex- 
pected to marry Lilian Bathrow, but both his 
mother and father were very strenuous in ex- 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


151 


pressing their desire that he should see her. At 
the same time that Vendelle left Loudon (and 
Matlock went with him) the Lily was sent up 
from Surfport to visit a friend of her father’s 
in New York. The family in which she made 
her home in the next three months, for the 
supposed purpose of becoming used to city 
ways and the social customs of polite life, was 
one to which both the young men were stran- 
gers, but Vendelle was given a letter to the 
head of the house and was instructed to make 
his American stay with, him. Vendelle told 
Matlock during the voyage that he had flatly 
determined to do nothing of the kind. 

" It will be enough if I call upon this girl 
and pay her my respects,” he said. " It is too 
much to ask that we should mutually inflict 
each other for six weeks.” 

"What do you propose to do then?” Mat- 
lock asked anxiously. 

"I don’t know,” said Vendelle. "I only 
know that I shall go no further and no faster 
in this matter than I am forced to go. I shall 
undoubtedly call upon you to aid me.” 

Matlock was glad to hear Vendelle say this. 
He had not entire confidence in his friend’s 
stoicism and he was thoroughly imbued with 
an exalted idea of Lilian’s fascination. As he 


152 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


did not want them to marry, he naturally was 
averse to their meeting; and he was to be de- 
pended upon to give all the aid in his power 
to prevent such a dangerous occurrence. He 
would not, however, have taken the initiative 
in any deliberate scheme to keep them apart. 
Even if Yendelle dared oppose himself to the 
expressed wishes of his parents, under the 
circumstances Matlock believed that he must 
in nature be possessed of some little curiosity 
to see this water-side beauty of whom he had 
heard so much. But Vendelle assured him to 
the contrary. 

"See her!” he cried. "What for? If you 
had breakfasted on Lilian, dined on Lilian, 
supped on Lilian and lived on Lilian, as I have 
been obliged to do at home, ad nauseum, for 
the last month, you would consider any cir- 
cumstance which involved any more of Lilian 
something superlatively disagreeable. If I 
must, I must; but it will all depend upon how 
well her father and mine have laid this silly 
trap for me. I can read Vendelle like a book. 
He has made up his mind that I am going to 
marry this girl. If I can be led to do so 
voluntarily and pleasantly, well and good: if 
not, so much the worse for me. He first tries 
to delude me into the belief that I am follow- 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


15: 


ing my own inclination in doing his will, and 
he thinks I haven’t wit enough to see the trick. 
Now, if I refuse to see her at all, it will only 
precipitate upon me the wrath of the allied 
powers. It is better to temporize. In fact, 
that is my only hope. If I write back that I 
do not like this girl, that she is absolutely 
obnoxious to me, there will be trouble. Hence 
I shall pretend to be somewhat interested in 
her. By so doing I may stave off this dis- 
agreeable matter and trust in circumstances 
to make a fiasco of Yendelle’s campaign.” 

It seemed, indeed, as if circumstances were 
conspiring to favor this plan. When Matlock 
and his friend reached New York they found 
that the head of the household in which the 
Lily had made her home had been unavoidably 
called West by the necessities of business; and 
though he had delegated his authority over 
Philip Vendelle to his commercial associate 
and to his wife, the cynic found no difficulty 
in evading the disagreeable necessity of mak- 
ing his stay under the same roof with the 
young woman whom he was loth to meet. To 
avoid calling upon her and paying her his 
respects was not so easy a matter, but he post- 
poned the visit. Meantime he made his home 
with Matlock at the house of the father of that 


154 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


young man, shut himself up in his room, 
regardless of conventionalities or appearances, 
and attended strictly to business. At night 
he frequently went out alone for a walk and 
was gone till a very late hour. On such 
occasions Matlock sat up for him. 

One night he came in unsteady and stag- 
gering. Matlock at first thought him intoxi- 
cated, but he soon discovered that this was not 
the case. When Vendelle reached the lighted 
room, Matlock saw that he was very pale, that 
his eyes were bloodshot, that his whole appear- 
ance indicated mental suffering. 

" In the name of all that is great and good ! ” 
cried Matlock, "what has happened to you?” 

"I have been cast into hell,” was Vendelle’s 
characteristic reply, uttered in a tone and 
manner that left no doubt as to the earnestness 
of the assertion. 

" Something has happened that greatly 
troubles you, Vendelle.” 

"Oh!” said Vendelle fiercely, " don’t ques- 
tion me; I might answer you.” He turned 
upon Matlock as if this were the worst threat 
he could have offered him. 

"I don't Avant to know,” said the startled 
Matlock, quickly, " that which doesn’t concern 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


155 


"You are very right,” said Vendelle, laugh- 
ing excitedly. " The contented ignorance of 
a child is preferable to the despairing knowl- 
edge of a man. Moral, never enlighten your- 
self. I met a forgotten acquaintance to-night 
and he enlightened me. If I had known six- 
teen years ago what I have discovered within 
an hour, I should never have burdened you 
with my society.” 

He began to pace the floor excitedly, while 
Matlock watched him with uneasy dread. 

" I hope,” ventured Matlock, " it is nothing 
that can affect our friendship?” 

Vendelle suddenly approached him, took his 
hand, looked into his face with strange wist- 
fulness and said : 

"Matlock, some day you’ll find it out. 
Sooner or later I shall tell you. Don’t think 
too bitterly of me, friend. Try to think that 
in me there was some good ; that I might have 
been very different, but for an early shipwreck. 
Good-night.” 

He wrung Matlock’s hand and stole swiftly 
to his room. Whatever his mysterious dis- 
covery had been, it was evidently something of 
no ordinary moment. It is no exaggeration 
to say that he never recovered from it. From 
that night there was a marked change in the 


156 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


manner of the man. He no longer found any 
pleasure in his books. Seasons of misan- 
thropic gloom alternated with the symptoms 
of midnight dissipation. Matlock did not 
know, but he more than once suspected his 
friend of falling back into the abandoned 
habits of his earlier life. 

Meantime Vendelle changed his mind ab- 
ruptly about important matters and became 
as variable as a weathercock. The morning 
after his strange behavior, he said to Matlock 
with great earnestness : 

"Friend, I have come to a decision. Ven- 
delle shall not dictate to me about this matri- 
monial affair. I have made up my mind to take 
the consequences whatever they be. I shall 
not see this daughter of our friend Bathrow.” 

"Have you fully thought it over?” asked 
Matlock. 

" Of course,” said Vendelle impatiently, " or I 
should not speak of it. Now, I want you to 
do me a favor. I want you to call upon this 
girl, present her my compliments and say to 
her that I am ill and cannot come in person.” 

Matlock was almost frightened at the inten- 
sity of the joy that swept over him with the 
thought that he might have to execute this 
commission for his friend. He had held to his 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


157 


virtuous determination not to see her and for 
that purpose had refrained from even telling 
her of his American visit with an heroic forti- 
tude that could have its roots only in an 
approving conscience. Now Vendelle was 
going to force him to break his vow. Surely 
it could be no crime to oblige a friend, in a 
matter of such serious import as this. Still he 
conscientiously strove to set up a feeble 
obstacle by asking if it were really necessary 
that anybody should see her. 

"Certainly,’’ said Vendelle, "she expects 
me, and besides I must have some excuse to 
present to Vendelle. I can be very innocently 
sure that it was quite sufficient to have seen 
her by proxy. 

So Matlock went. 


158 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE PROXY. 

M ATLOCK called in the evening. As he 
was shown into the brilliantly lighted 
drawing-room, a figure in rustling silk rose 
from a chair and came forward to meet him. 
It seemed impossible that this could be the 
Lily. But it was she. Matlock was pained 
to observe how much more intense was the 
resemblance to the lost Madeline than when 
he had last seen her. She had grown graver 
and taller, and even in the first smile of her 
greeting he missed the spontaneous super- 
abundant joy that seemed to him such an 
essential part of her nature. But it was only 
a surface change. She did not speak till the 
servant had closed the door; but stood hold- 
ing his hand, looking into his face with an 
expression of constraint. The moment the 
door closed there was a transformation. The 
restraint and hesitancy in her face gave way 
to a joyous light and she cried out: 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


159 


" Oh, Willard, I am so glad to see you! So 
glad to see you ! ” — threw her arms around 
his neck and kissed him, — it was a mutual 
kiss, — continued to cling to him thus, and 
began to cry quietly against his shoulder. 

All Matlock’s long-repressed passion rose 
in a flood that came dangerously near sweep- 
ing away forever the conscientious barrier 
which he had so manfully erected and main- 
tained between them. His pride alone sus- 
tained him. He felt that if this barrier should 
give way even for an instant, it Avould be a 
lasting shame to him. Should he let this child 
see how great a fool ho was; not only make 
himself ridiculous in her eyes, but destroy her 
sweet confidence and render her unhappy? 
Long brooding over a lamentable fact had 
morbidly exaggerated it in his eyes. The 
distance between them had assumed outra- 
geous proportions. He felt like a grandfather 
who had fallen in love with a baby. Such a 
secret could not be other than a guilty one; to 
permit it to be known, a bitter disgrace. So 
Matlock, with a great effort, controlled himself. 

"Why don’t you speak to me?” she mur- 
mured. "You stand there like a statue and 
I am all of a tremble. Is that all you think of 
me?” 


160 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


Matlock answered in an unsteady voice : 

"What would you have me do? What 
would you have me say? I assure you, Lilian, 
I am overjoyed at meeting you again.” His 
words had a conventional sound which he did 
not exactly like; but even so, it was better 
than the words which his heart would have 
uttered; and he felt at that moment that there 
was no middle ground. It was a choice 
between coldness aftd the whole truth. She 
sighed, released him, and with averted face 
went back to the seat from which she had 
arisen. 

"Of course,” she said, constrainedly, "you 
have been seeing much of other people and of 
stir and I have been all the time shut up in 
myself with nothing but my own little world 
to take away my thoughts from the old time. 
A year, Willard, a year is a very long time, 
is it not?” 

"An eternity! ” said Matlock hotly, taking a 
step forward. She looked up quickly. Mat- 
lock bowed gravely; perhaps it would be bet- 
ter to say that he hung his head; but the 
motion was very sedate and his face had more 
of a grim despair than of shame in it. 

" I suppose you will never come to Surfport 
any more?” she said in a tone of pathetic 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 1 61 

reproach. Matlock shut his teeth tightly to- 
gether and with heroic fortitude seated him- 
self beside her on the sofa and took her 
unresisting little hand in his own. 

"Lilian,” he said, "you do not seem happy? 
I would not have thought from your letters 
that you had changed. What is it? ” 

"Well,” she said, furtively wiping her eyes, 
"I am older. I am no longer a mere girl.” 
She uttered the last two words with a slight 
bitterness that puzzled Matlock. "I passed 
my seventeenth birthday last week,” she con- 
tinued with some spirit. "In twelve months 
more I shall be my own mistress.” 

" And I,” said Matlock, gravely, " shall be 
exactly twice your age, — thirty-six.” 

She turned her face toward him. 

"You don’t appear so,” she said with some 
uneasiness, thrusting a pin in and out of the 
folds of her dress, regardless of the holes it 
left. " You never did appear so to me.” 

"One of these days I shall,” said Matlock 
in a melancholy tone. " When you are in the 
prime of womanhood I shall be tottering on 
the edge of the grave.” 

"Then you deserve to totter,” she exclaimed 
with almost a flash of her old spirit. " Age 
doesn’t amount to a great deal. Why, I knew 

li 


162 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


a man of sixty who married a girl of nineteen, 
and she died first.” 

Matlock looked at her in horror. 

" The wretch ! ” he cried. " I should think 
so.” 

"Yes, she was a wretch, I suppose,” said 
Lilian, misunderstanding him. " She married 
him for his money.” 

"I couldn’t imagine your doing such a 
thing,” said Matlock, thinking of Vendelle* 
" Lilian, you never would marry a man more 
than twice your age for any consideration in 
the world? ” 

"You talk as if you were afraid I might,” 
said Lilian, archly. "Who is this man?” 

Matlock stammered. 

" My father has had me come here,” Lilian 
went on, looking at him searchingly, "for 
some reason, and I strongly suspect it is 
because he expects me to marry somebody 
whom I never saw. I have been told daily 
that somebody would call to see me. But 
nobody has called.” 

"Nobody will call,” said Matlock, quickly. 
"The gentleman is my friend. I have come 
from him to present his compliments, to say 
that he is ill and regrets having to return to 
England without seeing you. It cannot be 


THE ROMANCE OR THE LILIES. 


163 


that your father wishes you to marry so young, 
and last of all, this man. He is utterly unfit 
for you, and though he is my friend I must 
freely say to you, Lilian, because you are my 
friend too, that I could not imagine a worse 
fate for you than the fate of being yoked to 
him.” 

Matlock was very earnest. The Lily looked 
at him and broke into a rippling laugh that, 
like a magic wand, conjured up Surfport and 
the waves. 

" 1 am quite prepared to fall in love with this 
stranger after your description of him,” she 
said. "Has he been ill all the time?” 

"Very,” said Matlock. 

" Then,” said the Lily, with sly gravity, " I 
think if he is one of my father’s friends I had 
better go and nurse him.” 

" No, no,” said Matlock quickly. " That 
wouldn’t be exactly proper. Besides he is to 
go home at once.” 

"Oh! He isn’t too sick to travel then?” 
queried the Lily with a look of amusement 
which increased Matlock’s confusion. 

"You may tell your friend,” she said with 
renewed gravity, "that I am very much 
obliged to him for his compliments, very much ; 
but that neither my father nor anybody else 


164 


THE ROMANCE OE THE LILIES. 


in the wide world saddles yokes upon me 
without my fujl consent.” 

" I admire your spirit,” said Matlock. " Y ou 
are still the queen that you were though they 
have transplanted you from your native rocks 
to stifle in a drawing-room.” 

" Stifle ! ” she echoed with sudden vehemence. 

• " You have used the only word in the language 
that will describe this city life. I abominate 
it. I am tired of it. I am going to run away.” 

”!No!” exclaimed Matlock. "You don’t 
really mean to do that? ” 

" Oh, but I do,” said the Lily. 

"But where would you go? ” cried Matlock 
in alarm. 

"Where?” echoed Lilian, with a sad smile. 
" Where should I go hut home? They have 
taken away from me all the things that I love 
and surrounded me with rules and formulas 
and definitions. Their idea of life here is that 
it is a great dictionary. If I only had some- 
body in the midst of it whom I could really 
love — even — even if you were here, I might 
be contented; but nobody is in sympathy with 
me; the girls are heartless; the mother does 
not understand me; the tutors are dry and 
learned. This is not the romantic world I read 
about. It doesn’t interest, it repels me, and, 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


165 


Willard, unless you tell me that I must stay 
I am going home.” 

" I ! ” exclaimed Matlock. " What right 
have I to command you?” 

" The right I give you by asking you,” she 
answered, looking down and averting her 
dazzling face so that he could not see it. 

" Then in the name of heaven, go,” said 
Matlock, with passion. "It is as much an 
outrage to bring you here as it is to take a 
wild bird out of its place in the fields and 
hang him up in a gilded cage. I would open 
wide the doors if it were me, Lilian, and let 
you go ! ” 

" So readily ! ” she murmured in a voice 
scarcely audible. " Then I will go. But shall 
I never see you again? It is a whole year 
and you have not been to Surfport.” 

" Lilian,” said Matlock impulsively, " I will 
come to Surfport again.” 

She gave him her hand quickly and looked 
up with a new radiance. 

"You will promise me that?” she asked 
eagerly. 

" To be sure I will,” said Matlock, in spite 
of conscience. And he wondered what made 
her seem so glad. 

After that she was brighter and more like 


166 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


her old self till he came to go. She held his 
hand a long time and looked up to him with a 
sad earnestness when he bade her good-by. 
He had never seen the lost Madeline more 
intensely living and breathing than at that 
moment. He wanted to take her in his arms 
and cry out: "Lilian, I loved you before you 
were born ! My life’s angel, let us forget time 
and join hands across the chasm.” 

But he only bowed gravely and went away, 
leaving her to weep in silence. 

As he walked home along the quiet streets 
he looked up between the tall buildings and 
saw the stars shining and thought of Surfport 
and the w r aves and himself a boy again climb- 
ing the rugged staircase in the rocks to find 
that vision of beauty which had filled his life 
with music. He knew indeed that he had 
never loved Madeline Perham as he loved 
Lilian Bathrow, but the two were not wholly 
separable in his mind. He felt that for some 
wise purpose, Madeline Perham was not, as 
people thought beneath the sod, forgotten in 
the Surfport cemetery. She was still a force 
and a power in the world; though acting 
through the face of a child whose innocence 
and purity were as clear as the pale but steady 
lights he saw shining in the heavens. 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


167 


I have said that Wendelle had become vari- 
able. The day after he assured Matlock so 
positively that he would not see the daughter 
of Leander Bathrow, he suddenly made up his 
mind that that was the only safe thing to do. 
Matlock, with anxiety almost amounting to 
terror, saw him go. With inexpressible relief, 
he saw him return from a fruitless quest. 

Lilian had already put her resolution to the 
proof and had fled to Surfport. 


168 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

MATLOCK IS TRULY ALARMED. 

D URING the voyage back to England 
Vendelle was morose and unapproach- 
able. "When they reached London he hid him- 
self somewhere, so that for a long time Matlock 
did not see him. But Matlock heard of him 
in vague rumors and the stories were such as 
he did not like to believe. 

In the early autumn Vendelle surprised 
Matlock by suddenly calling upon him one 
night at his rooms. Vendelle showed, despite 
his affected nonchalance, that he was ill at ease 
and he was rather disinclined to meet Matlock’s 
frank glance. When Matlock reproached him 
for keeping away so long, he excused himself 
awkwardly, was of the opinion that the loss of 
his company must be an inconsequential matter, 
and changed the subject. 

"What I wanted to speak about particu- 
larly,” he said, " was this American girl whom 
I am expected to marry. In fact, it is substan- 
tially settled now.” 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 1G9 

" Indeed ! ” said Matlock hotly. " It may, 
however, be found that it needs something 
more than the wish of her father and yours and 
your acquiescence, unwilling or otherwise, to 
complete the contract.” 

"Matlock,” said Vendelle, looking at him 
keenly, " this is not the first time you have 
spoken upon this matter to me with something 
of the force of an interested party. How does 
this interest you except upon general princi- 
ples?” 

" Hot at all,” Matlock hastened to say. " I 
object to it upon the broad ground of common 
decency. If I have any deeper interest in it it 
is because I know Mr. Balhrow’s daughter to 
be a very estimable and high-minded young 
lady.” 

" Ah ! ” said Vendelle, " you have been some- 
what intimate with her, then? Do you know 
her well enough to understand her.?” 

Matlock hesitated to reply. 

"Because if you do,” said Vendelle, " you 
arc a deeper psychologist than I am. I unhes- 
itatingly relegate her to the limbo of the mys- 
terious.” 

" What do you know of her? ” was Matlock’s 
astonished query. 

"I know this,” said Vendelle. "She has 


170 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


precipitated this matter to a crisis with her 
own little hand. A reward is now put upon her 
head by the wily Yendelle. The day I marry 
her I come into possession of a substantial 
annuity to last during the term of my matri- 
monial servitude. If we separate through any 
fault of mine, the annuity dissolves with the 
breaking of the bonds. Besides this, there is 
a slight matter of a few thousand pounds 
(which just matches my debts), to be handed 
over to me after the marriage service. It has 
come to the ears of my father that I have been 
leading a wild life lately. I am now to be 
disciplined. Yendelle is clever, isn’t he?” 
added the younger of that name, bitterly. 

" Do you mean that she has had anything to 
do with this?” questioned Matlock, aghast. 

"She evidently takes some interest in it,” 
returned Yendelle. " Before we left Hew 
York she had written a letter to her father, — 
quite an unprecedented matter in itself, I under- 
stand, — in which she wasted a deal of quiet 
sarcasm in praising the appearance of the 
young man who had called upon her, and say- 
ing how much she was prepared to like him 
when she knew him better. I don’t know 
what you think. I call that a bold and un- 
ladylike letter. Everybody believed that I 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


171 


hacl seen her, and I was in no mood to deny it. 
Since then I have reason to know that Bathrow 
wrote to her, plainly asking her if she felt that 
she could ever like me well enough to marry 
me. She replied at once that she was very 
well pleased with the young man who had 
called upon her in New York, but that she 
should really like the pleasure of giving him her 
answer in person. Then Yendelle and Bath- 
row wrote jointly, inviting her to visit Eng- 
land. She replied dutifully that if such was 
her father’s command she should obey it. If 
it was only a request, which she was at liberty 
to refuse, she unhesitatingly refused it, and she 
embodied in the letter this remarkable sen- 
tence, — ' If you have anybody whom you par- 
ticularly desire me to meet do you think it 
would be more dignified that I should go half 
across the world to him or that he should 
come to me?’ If that is not an invitation, 
what is it? Think of being married to a wife 
like that! I have had her picture presented to 
me with great ceremony and overwhelming 
air of — could anything be finer? Why, Mat- 
lock, she allowed herself to be taken with bare 
arms, a wreath upon her head and a laugh on 
her face. And this expressly to be sent to 
me ! What modesty ! This is your child , 


172 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


your baby. Either she is a fool, or she is mak- 
ing fools of the rest of us.” 

Matlock was so utterly overwhelmed that 
he was for some time incapable of collecting 
his scattered thoughts. 

"You — you don’t even allow her to be 
beautiful?” he faltered. 

" What beauty is there in a grinning doll? ” 
Vendelle broke out. "What makes beauty 
anyway? Regularity of features? Piquancy 
of expression? She has both, I grant you. 
But she lacks the chief charm of woman — the 
little instinctive shrinking from the coarser 
part of humanity that we call modesty.” 

"But you must understand that this girl 
has not been brought up and educated as 
others have been. She is a child of nature, 
pure and simple, expanding to womanhood in 
God’s own way. She has never been inter- 
fered with by moral horticulturists or cramped 
and compressed by social rules and formulas.” 

" The qualities she lacks,” said Vendelle, 
impatiently, "are not matters of education. 
They are innate. It is the instinct of the sex. 
Must I, who admire delicacy above everything 
else, marry an Amazon because she is physi- 
cally perfect? Vendelle answers, ' Yes.’ And 
so it is settled. Bah! we won’t prolong this 


THE ROMANCE OE THE LILIES. 


173 


useless discussion. I have come to tell you 
that in a short time I shall respond to her cor- 
dial invitation and again visit America.” 

" I can throw nothing in your way,” said 
Matlock, moodily, " but if you accomplish the 
mission that takes you there I shall become an 
atheist.” 

Vendelle laughed grimly. 

" Then I am to do missionary work,” he 
said. " I shall rid you of your cardinal super- 
stition, and I may console myself with the 
reflection that while I am binding myself with 
chains I am setting you free.” 

Matlock shuddered. 


174 


THE .ROMAN CE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER XYII. 

VENDELLE EXPLAINS HIMSELF. 

I X the following X ovember, Matlock, being 
in Xew York, was startled to meet his 
friend Yendelle on the street. He was startled 
because he had left him in England and had 
had no other intimation of his coming to 
America than the general one that he eventu- 
ally intended to pay his respects in person to 
Lilian Bathrow; and this project had been so 
long postponed that Matlock had come to regard 
it as abandoned. He was startled, too, because 
of the change which had taken place in Yen- 
delle. The pale aristocratic face was fixed in 
a grim expression which gained its most strik- 
ing feature from a constant compression of the 
lips. The eyes were dull and staring and 
fixed straight ahead. He walked with a stoop 
like an old man and his head trembled. Mat- 
lock at first thought it some outrageous cari- 
cature of his friend’s appearance, but a second 
look assured him that it was indeed Yendelle. 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


175 


Vendelle did not see him and M ould have 
passed him unconsciously, had not Matlock 
stopped him. Vendelle did not seem sur- 
prised at the meeting. On the contrary, he 
took it as a matter of course. To Matlock’s 
astonished exclamation: "Why, Vendelle, 
how came you here?” he simply replied: "I 
have merely stopped here to take a long breath 
on my way to Surfport.” 

"You never told me,” said Matlock, re- 
proachfully. "Will you not come to my 
house? ” 

"No,” said Vendelle, shortly. "I am not 
going at all into society now. If you wish to 
see me, come to my hotel this evening and let 
us have a talk together. I presumed you 
could not approve of what I am going to do 
and therefore I kept away. But come, if you 
will. I don’t object to your arguing with me.” 

" I most certainly shall come. That is, if I 
can feel sure that you want me,” said Matlock. 

Vendelle suddenly extended his hand as if 
he would grasp that of his friend and then as 
suddenly withdrew it. 

"Matlock, will nothing ever teach you to 
know me?” he asked, with a queer smile and 
abruptly walked away. 

When Matlock knocked for admission to 


176 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


his friend’s room that evening, Vendelle 
opened the door himself. Vendelle was clad 
in dressing-gown and slippers, and a red tas- 
sel dangled from his waist. But such was the 
expression of his countenance that he looked 
a very mockery of that ease and comfort which * 
he endeavored to simulate. 

He welcomed Matlock with much show of 
cordiality. Matlock was warmly returning 
the pressure of his hand, when a sudden dis- 
covery caused him to start back. The room 
was pervaded with that strong, peculiar odor 
which he knew so well and so unpleasantly. 
The fact dismayed him. Vendelle had re- 
moved all signs of his recent indulgence. 
There was not even a pipe in sight. Evidently 
the apartment had been recently aired to clear 
it of the smoke, for a window was still open 
at the top admitting a chill draught and attract- 
ing attention to itself by a fluttering curtain; 
but there was something too subtle and linger- 
ing about the fumes of Mr. Togg’s substitute 
to be got rid of in this way and Matlock 
recognized it in a breath. 

" Oh, Vendelle! ” he said, reproachfully and 
fearfully, and sank into a chair. # 

Vendelle looked at him with a phantom of 
a smile. 


The romance of the lilies. 


177 


"You have caught me, in spite of all my 
trouble, eh?” he said. "Ah, well, I would 
rather you had thought that I kept my word, — 
hut small difference.” lie turned and shut the 
window and sat down by the centre table, 
placed his elbows on the top, formed with his 
two forefingers the outline of a pyramid, and 
confined his gaze to the apex. Then as Mat- 
lock remained silent, he began to whistle softly. 

" Vendelle,” said Matlock, at last, " how long- 
lias this been going on? ” 

"Why inquire? ” returned Vendelle, shortly. 
" Why harrow yourself ? ” 

"Vendelle,” said Matlock, unsteadily, "if I 
have no longer the right I once had to question 
you, — the right of a friend — ” 

Vendelle interrupted him. 

" I haven’t questioned your right, Matlock. 
You have clung to me longer than anybody 
else. You still seem to see some good in mo 
even after my own relatives have given me up. 
Your supreme confidence does no credit to 
your head, but it does, as the expression is, to 
your heart. I cannot call you a fool, because 
I am conscious of having abused your confi- 
dence. I am too well aware that you have 
been my friend and still are my friend only 
because I have kept you in ignorance of the 
12 


178 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


truth about myself. I know that if you clid 
know me you would shun me. Therefore, 
after thinking it all over, I came to the conclu- 
sion that it was my duty as a man of honor 
either to tell you everything and break it off 
that way, or in lieu of that to absent myself 
from your society. I shrank from telling you. 
I was not afraid of it. I distinctly assert that 
I was not afraid. But it is never very pleas- 
ant to tear the mask from the eyes of inno- 
cence, and I refrained and kept away. That 
is all. I wished to make this very long and 
somewhat tedious explanation because the tone 
of your remark implied the reproach very 
unjust to me, that I wished to break our friend- 
ship.” 

Vendelle ceased. He had not taken his 
eyes from the apex of the pyramid which his 
fingers formed. Matlock heard him in agi- 
tated silence. 

"Yendelle,” he said, when his friend had 
finished, " if you refer to your recent course 
of life — ” 

Vendelle moved abruptly and destroyed the 
pyramid. lie turned his face from Matlock, 
and answered: 

"I refer to nothing of the sort. You have 
confounded the results with the cause. The 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


179 


thing to which I have referred which should 
debar me from the society of men like you, 
happened eighteen years ago, long before you 
knew there was a Philip Vendelle in the world. 
Unlucky men, so called, have been degraded 
to the lowest level of society for less than I 
have done. But fortune, if you call it fortune, 
protected me. My secret is my own. It is 
shared with no one, except that discreet Provi- 
dence in which you believe, that is so impo- 
tent ly silent when the grossest wrongs are 
perpetrated, but whispers so loudly, if we are 
to believe them, in the ears of fools and fanat- 
ics. Matlock, the crime is my own; I have 
been my own judge, my own jury, my own 
accuser, for eighteen years. Shall I speak? 
Shall I divide this burden? ” 

Vendelle was so calm, so dispassioned, his 
tones were so natural, he spoke so easily, that 
Matlock had heard him in horrified silence. 
When Vendelle paused, Matlock sprang to his 
feet. 

"Ho, no! ” he cried. "Do not tell me, Ven- 
delle. What have I to do with the weakness 
or the sin of your youth? I knew you as a 
man. As a man, I fancied you. 1 saw in you 
noble qualities which your sneers and self- 
contempt were not sufficient to conceal. I do 


180 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


not wish to know, Vendelle, I do not wish to 
know. I will not hear you.” 

Vendelle wheeled slowly about in his chair 
and turned toward Matlock his pallid face and 
shaking head. 

" Why ! Are you so easily alarmed ? ” he 
queried sadly. " Then why not let us shake 
hands at once and say good-by V” 

" You would not force this confession upon 
me ! ” exclaimed Matlock. 

"1 use no force,” said Vendelle, wearily. 
" How wild you are ! If you did indeed know 
what I have been and then you would shake 
hands with me, that would be one thing. I 
cannot endure the feeling that the man who 
gives me a smile would turn his back upon me 
if he knew the truth.” 

"And yet!” cried Matlock, "you bore that 
feeling with a very good grace for years. This 
sensitiveness of yours is new. It is morbid. 
It is not natural and I suspect I know the 
cause, Vendelle.” 

"The substitute?” Vendelle said interrog- 
atively. "You are wrong again, Matlock. 
Again you confound the cause with the 
results. If I allowed you to be my friend so 
long, it was because I did not know the enor- 
mity of the crime that I had committed. When 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 181 

I discovered that, I ceased to visit you. 
Friend, why prolong this? Why not set an 
end to it to-night and meet no more except 
upon the common level of men who nod and 
pass each other in the street? If you did 
know you would not think me fit company for 
you.” 

" And yet,” said Matlock, " you are now on - 
your way to begin an undertaking which if 
you succeed would bind to you for life the 
living embodiment of innocence and purity, — 
a sweet young girl who does not even know 
the world.” 

Matlock very plainly heard Vendelle grind 
his teeth. This was the first show of feeling 
he had exhibited. 

" Am I accountable for that? ” demanded 
the cynic. " Is it my seeking? Was or was it 
not forced on me? Have or have I not fought 
againstit till necessity compels me to surrender? 
Am I responsible for being in debt, for being 
at the mercy of Vendelle, for having no finan- 
cial resource but him, for having tastes which 
demand gratification, a body which craves 
pampering, and no profession or means of 
livelihood but one, — and that has ruined me, 
— the gaming table? Do you wish me to 
cast my lot in with the blacklegs and live 


182 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


henceforth in the sewers of society? Say, is 
that what yon would have me do, Matlock? 
And is that not the only alternative? ” 

"No,” said Matlock, positively. "Not for 
a man. No! ” 

"Unfortunately,” said Yendelle, relapsin 
into his old nonchalance, "I am no longer 
man.” 

" Vendelle,” said Matlock, "I cannot com- 
prehend you. You are still as you always 
were in many tilings, a mystery to me.” 

" Does any man understand even himself?” 
queried Yendclle. " I doubt it very much.” 

" How you can be so sensitive with regard 
to me 5 and at the same moment so heartless 
in the matter of this proposed marriage — ” 
Matlock began. 

V’endelle interrupted him vehemently. 

" Yery well. I am doing a heartless thing. 
My own conscience is too dead to warn me. 
Then it is your duty to prevent it. You step 
in and denounce me At the last moment, it 
may be, when there is no other alternative; 
when this embodiment of innocence of which 
you speak has with monumental guilelessness 
agreed to accept such a barefaced proposition 
as I shall offer her, and there is no other way 
to work out her salvation, — you step in and 


be e« 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


183 


denounce me boldly, and let the law deprive 
her of that sacrifice of herself she is so unwit- 
tingly making.” 

"I do not know whether this is sarcasm or 
excitement, Vendelle. I do know that I have 
not and shall still refuse to have any knowl- 
edge from which to denounce you for any- 
thing.” 

"No,” said Vendelle, speaking very quickly 
and intensely, " no, you are wrong about that. 
You recollect what I told you of the wife I 
married in secret in this very city almost nine- 
teen years ago? ” 

" Well, what of that! ” questioned the unsus- 
picious Matlock. " That is no barrier. She 
is dead. You said yourself that she died a 
long while back.” 

" I said the truth,” said Vendelle turning a 
strange face upon his friend, " for I shot that 
wife through the heart at Surfport eighteen 
years ago.” 


184 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

VENDELLE TELLS EVERYTHING. 

M ATLOCK uttered a cry. He had a 
wild notion of putting his hands to his 
ears, but it was too late. Vendelle had given 
him the key to his strange character. At a 
glance Matlock saw the possibilities of a use- 
ful life laid waste and perceived the logic of 
the long, vain struggle to avert a suffering 
mind from the recollection it could not efface. 
A dead ambition, a purposeless existence, 
became reconciled with a vigorous intellect and 
a tireless energy. He comprehended Vendelle 
at last. 

Even now he would have stopped him; he 
would have pretended not to understand; he 
would have gone away, but for the single 
word " Surfport.” A possibility, so improbable 
that it seemed absurd, flashed into his mind. 
Had Madeline Perham been the wife of Philip 
Vendelle? 

"Vendelle,” he said tremulously, "you have 
forced me to hear this horrible thing against 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


185 


my will. Go on now and justify yourself. 
Give me your reasons. A man of your nature 
could not commit a crime like that without 
the strongest provocation.” 

“A man of my nature,” returned Vendelle, 
excitedly, "can fancy a provocation where 
none exists. A man of my nature is capable 
of fierce passion, and may act upon blind, 
unreasoning impulse, just as a mad bull 
dashes at a red cloth. A man of my nature 
is capable of the most unjustifiable, the most 
merciless, the most cruel of crimes. I have 
not one extenuating plea to offer for myself. 
If you judge me as I judge myself you will 
say he richly merited the disgrace he so 
miraculously escaped.” 

Vendelle, though he still tried to appear 
nonchalant, and refrained from looking at 
Matlock, was trembling with the intensity of 
his thoughts, but of the two Matlock was the 
more agitated. 

"I shall not condemn you, Vendelle,” he 
said, "until I have heard you. My brother 
who is dead carried his musket in the Avar. 
The mere fact that — ” Matlock felt the use- 
lessness of speech and stopped. 

"Ah!” said Vendelle, "you do not go on, 
but I know what you mean. Peace has sane- 


186 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


tionccl and permitted murders as well as war. 
So I told myself, so I told myself for eighteen 
years. Wait till you have heard me. I will 
not consume your time. I can put that whole 
limitless iniquity almost into a breath I 
have told you why I married her and how. 
She was a poor shop girl, here in this city, 
and I married her before I had known her 
two weeks. I did not expect to find her 
without faults of which I did not dream. I 
did expect to find her pure. I won’t go into 
that. "When I married her I did not care 
much, I was a rash, hot-headed boy. After I 
married her I began all at once to love her, 
as I never loved anything in the world. I 
grew suspicious and jealous and I found 
much food for that suspicion and that jealousy 
in her past. She told me first that her father 
and mother had treated her with cruelty and 
that, unable to endure it longer, and feeling 
a supreme confidence in her own personal 
powers, she left her home in the country one 
night and came to the city to seek her fortune. 
It was a strange, romantic story, of almost 
incredible hardship and suffering. She said 
she had written to her parents but once, and 
that was to prevent their search for her by 
telling them that she was well and safe and 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


187 


independent and that they might try to for- 
give her as she forgave them. I enjoined 
strict secrecy upon her when I married her, 
and when she asked me for permission to 
notify her parents of what had taken place, 
I forbade her to do so until she had my per- 
mission. It was then that I felt suspicious of' 
her, while she was living in obscure chambers 
and I at my grand hotel, while we had not yet 
taken before the world that attitude which I 
proposed to take but which we never did 
assume. One day I heard strange rumors 
about my wife. I could not allow r it to remain 
like that. I must know my doom or my relief 
at once. I rushed blindly on to find the 
sources of that rumor. The source was no 
less a personage than her own father, and the 
means that he had taken to satisfy himself, a 
detective. "Without waiting with a calm, cool 
patience, which I did not indeed possess, to 
verify my facts, I rushed back to her and 
fancied that my own senses completed the 
testimony. As I went in I saw a shadow 
dart across the obscure room, a shadow whose 
reality I could not find — not then — a shadow 
indeed! Then I poured out upon her the 
rage that was in my heart. I must have 
acted as I felt, like an insane man. I would 


188 THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 

have killed her then and there, I doubt not, 
but that she got away from me and fled. I 
followed her. She had the start of me by one 
train; but as she sped across the country I 
was always close behind her, determined, sure 
that nothing could prevent our final meeting. 
It was night when I came into the town of 
Surfport. I have not forgotten that night. 
The sky was heavy, the air was sharp, the 
roads deserted. It was a vast, lonely place. 
I did not know where she was and I made no 
inquiries in the town. I was not a schemer, 
but instinct told me better than that. I knew 
that this had been her home, that somewhere 
within this dismal tract of country where the 
roar of the water on the beach was ever sound- 
ing in my ears louder even than the quick 
throbbings of my own hot temples — that 
somewhere I should find her. I wandered 
about in an aimless search. All at once it 
began to snow. It snowed very hard. It 
blinded me. I still went on, heedless of any- 
thing but my insane thoughts, muttering to 
myself I was young and vigorous of mind, but 
the blow had not wholly left me what I had 
been. I think I must have strayed a little out of 
the town limits and have come quite near the 
beach, for the booming was very loud. All at 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


189 


once before me through the tangled flakes I 
saw a light. It proved, when I approached it, 
to be a lantern swinging in the arch of a gate- 
way before a house. Everything was very 
still about that house, but there was a light 
in a corner room down stairs. I thought I 
would seek shelter there for the night or ask 
my way. I stole up and looked in at the 
window. I saw a large, low room with a 
great fire burning in an old-fashioned chimney. 
In a chair in one corner of that chimney- 
place sat an old man, staring straight ahead 
of him. Before the fire in another chair, and 
turned partly toward me, was my wife. It 
had come. 

" I don’t remember going in. I remembgj* 
being in that room with my back against the 
closed door and of crying out to her : ' I care 
not w T ho in this house befriends you. You 
must settle with me alone now.’ She did not 
cry out. She did not answer me. The old 
man gave no heed to me. I charged her over 
again with her sin. I asked her to deny it. 
She would not. I asked her to justify herself. 
She arose all at once, trembling but very proud, 
and ordered me, having insulted her, to leave 
her. She spoke in a tone of command and 
pointed to the door. Still the old man never 


190 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


moved. The house was very quiet. It was 
like a place on which had fallen a devilish en- 
chantment. The enchantment was on me, too. 
I was mad with jealousy. I saw a pistol on 
the mantel. I took it up and shot her as she 
stood there, pointing to the door, and she 
fell back into the chair, crying out piteously 
that I had killed her. 

" The old man did not start and seize me. 
I spoke to him. I told him that I was justified 
in what I had done, that even society would 
justify me; that I was not a common murderer. 
Still he did not move. He was not asleep. 
He was not dead. I touched him and felt the 
warm glow of life in his face. A horrid fear 
seized me. It was all an impossible night- 
mare, — this room, the spectacle of my dying 
wife, this mysterious old man! I thought, for 
the moment, I was mad. I threw the pistol 
from me and fled away — on — on — on — miles 
through the snow, till I sank down exhausted. 
I awoke to find myself in the house of a fish- 
erman who had been the good Samaritan to 
such a wretch as I. I looked into his honest 
face. I remembered all. I flung my purse at 
his feet and came back to life.” 

Vendelle saw it all before him, painted on 
the wall. There could be no doubt of that. 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


191 


His iigitatecl face, his staring eyes gave ample 
testimony ; and quite as plainly, in his chair 
behind him, Matlock saw it, too. 

"Vendelle,” said Matlock, "did I not know 
you spoke the living truth I should think that 
you were mad.” 

" Ay, would you not? ” said Vend elle, grimly. 
" That echoes the thought that I have often 
had myself. Mad! For years I went about 
trying to justify myself, — arguing to make 
myself believe that that which I had done was 
right. Sometimes when I have listened to the 
cant and the hypocrisy of society, sometimes 
when I have caught the world of virtuous men 
and women acting in spirit with all the cruelty 
and heartlessness with which I acted, I have 
thought myself quite persuaded. And this 
went on, until a year ago I learned the name 
of the man whom I thought had wronged me; 
learned it as I might have learned it long before 
had I been less violent, less insane.” 

" The man — ” repeated Matlock, helplessly. 

"Myself!” said Yendelle in an awful voice. 
" I was the man.” 

Was he, indeed, mad? 

"I — I do not understand you,” faltered 
Matlock. 

"Because it is incredible that any being 


192 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


should be so blind as I have been,” said Ven- 
delle. " The simple truth is that her father 
learned of her whereabouts in the city, and 
employed some one to watch her. Thus her 
relations with me were discovered. That was 
enough for him. It should not have been 
enough for me. Even after all that I had done, 
she was true to me, and as I had told her not 
to tell, when she went back to her father’s 
house that night and he charged upon her that 
she had lived in shame with me — she was 
silent and turned away out into the storm.” 

Vendelle’s voice sank. I know not what the 
picture was that confronted his staring eyes, 
but Matlock saw again in fancy that low, old- 
fashioned kitchen, lighted with the glow of 
the fire, that pale young face looking forth 
from the great chair and heard the faint voice 
murmuring, " The doors — the doors are open.” 

"The shadow was my own,” went on Ven- 
delle, wearily — " my very own. They tell me 
still that I had reason for my deed; but I will 
not believe it. She was pure as a lily, and if 
there was aught symbolic in the inscription on 
an idle tombstone I would find her nameless 
grave and place that sentence there; but it is 
a tardy reparation and the living would not 
believe it unless they knew the whole. To 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


193 


tell the whole, — that is the only way. Friend, 
you have heard me. Will you shake hands 
with me now?” 

Matlock hesitated. 

Yendelle turned toward him slowly his 
haggard face lighted with a quaint smile. 

" You see ! ” he said, " I told you.” 

Matlock rose up. 

"For your sin and your crime I shall not 
judge you, Philip. For the many noble quali- 
ties, the generous impulses, the heart that I 
know has had its humane and tender moments, 
I shall always remember you. I cannot part 
from you, sharing henceforth as I must with 
you this heavy burden, in anything but sorrow 
and regret. Here is my hand.” 

Vendelle arose on his side of the table and 
they elapsed hands, and looked into each other’s 
eyes. 

" Philip,” said Matlock, unsteadily, as they 
stood thus, " I knew your sainted Madeline 
when I was a boy, and heavy as this load i-s 
that you have placed upon my heart, I would 
rather have it there than that which you have 
taken away. I believed her a common sinner. 
Henceforth I shall think better of the world 
and of humanity.” 

13 


194 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

EIGHTEEN YEARS AS NOTHING. 

M ATLOCK was in his own chamber late at 
night, unable to sleep, unwilling to go 
to bed, when an awful thought flashed into his 
mind. In the intensity of the emotion which 
Vendelle’s confession had excited in him, he 
had completely lost sight of the matter which 
had been so heavily on his mind when he went 
up the hotel stairs to knock upon his friend’s 
door. Xow he suddenly recollected what V en- 
delle’s errand in America was. Did Yendelle 
know — of course he did not — in whose 
image had been fashioned the fair face of the 
girl whom his father wished him to marry? 
What might be the effect of the sudden sight 
of that face upon his already unbalanced and 
sensitive mind? Might it not drive him to 
madness? Leaving out all merciful consider- 
ations to the man himself, if that were possi- 
ble, might he not in the insanity of the moment, 
believing her a phantom sent to torment him, 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 195 

do her some fearful injury? Under any cir- 
cumstances, Vendelle must be warned. He 
must not go to Surfport. 

As soon as he had reached this conclusion 
Matlock left the house and hurried back to the 
hotel. The clerk’s astonishment when Mat- 
lock handed him his card, to be taken up im- 
mediately, overcame his sleepiness. He looked 
at Matlock doubtingly and at the card slill 
more doubtingly. 

" It is a matter of life and death,” said Mat- 
lock. 

” Sorry for you,” returned the clerk. " The 
gentleman paid his bill and went an hour ago. 
He inquired about the trains. He was going 
cast on the express. You’ll be too late for 
him.” 

Matlock realized this and passed a sleepless 
night in consequence. He resolved to follow 
Vendelle none the less, and the expectation of 
overtaking him on the way was only reason- 
able. The more he thought of the situation 
the more uneasy he became, the more his 
vague terror of the possible consequences 
grew. He remembered now, or thought he 
did, various little incidents of the meeting of 
the preceding night, which made him doubtful 
of Vendelle’s complete sanity. The fixed, 


196 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


staring look, the occasional vacant expression, 
the shaking and trembling of head and hand 
and all the unmistakable symptoms of mental 
and physical debility, came back to his mind 
now with a force which he had failed to per- 
ceive at first. 

Early in the morning he was on his way 
northward across the country at railroad speed. 
Reflection convinced him that it would be 
folly to attempt to trace Vendelle along the 
trunk lines. His only chance was to take the 
most direct route and with the shortest possi- 
ble delay reach that city in Maine from which 
diverged the little branch road that carried pas- 
sengers to the series of coast downs of which 
Surfport was one. Once on the line of this 
branch road, where travel was infrequent at 
this time of year and many of the passengers 
familiar to the people along the line, he could 
reasonably hope to learn whether so remark- 
able an individual as Vendelle had preceded 
him or not. Matlock had never realized be- 
fore what a distance, and more than all, what 
awkward breaks and delays in the way, sepa- 
rated New York from Surfport. Tired, worn 
out, from sheer inaction, having missed a most 
important connection by reason of a belated 
train, he came into Portland late at night. 


THE ROMANCE- OF THE LILIES. 


197 


To reach Surfport he had still many miles 
of slow and wearisome travel before him. It 
was necessary to go first to a distant junction 
and there await the train on the branch road 
which would take him to his destination. It 
was at this junction that he hoped to assure 
himself whether Vendelle had beaten him in 
the race or not. The probability that he had 
seemed so strong that Matlock felt the neces- 
sity of being obliged to pass the night in 
Portland an inexpressible hardship. Having 
examined the hotel registers in town and 
gained the gleam of hope which came from 
the knowledge that Vendelle’s name was not 
upon any of them, Matlock went to bed and 
tried to sleep. The horror of the situation 
had grown upon him until it had become a 
veritable nightmare. Grave questions troubled 
him constantly. Was Vendelle indeed in his 
right mind? Why had he left New York so 
suddenly in the middle of the night? Had he 
met her, in spite of his efforts to prevent it, 
face to face? 

Pursued by unwelcome phantoms, Matlock 
sank into an uneasy slumber. He awoke at 
dawn and passed a miserable hour or two be- 
fore the train left. When at last he felt him- 
self moving out of the depot his relief was 


198 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


great. It was the natural relief that came of a 
change from a sense of inaction to a conscious- 
ness that he was making some progress, how- 
ever fruitless. The uneasy foreboding and the 
haunting suspense did not leave him. 

He arrived at the junction before noon and 
began at once to make diligent inquiry of the 
people about the station whether they had 
seen, within the last twenty-four hours, any 
person who corresponded to the description of 
Vendelle. The reply was in the negative. 
Matlock then ventured to hope again. In half 
an hour he passed from doubt to certainty. 
Vendelle had not yet reached the junction. 

There was nothing to do now but to wait. 
He permitted the train which would have taken 
him to Surfport during the early afternoon to 
go on without him and in the absence of any- 
thing to do at the little station, strolled about 
the quiet country roads till the arrival of the 
next train from Portland. It was a rather 
chilly, gray November afternoon and there 
was a feeling in the air which seemed to him 
to prophesy snow before many hours. 

Gradually, as he walked about in the still 
and lonesome place, a sentiment very different 
from the one that had been depressing him 
gained a brief supremacy in his mind. Surf- 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


199 


port, and Surfport to him meant a radiant 
creature with great blue eyes and a bewitch- 
ing countenance, — Surfport was only a few 
miles away across the desolate, rocky country 
to the northeast. He almost fancied that he 
could hear the booming of the ocean on its 
rugged shore, — a sound which he had not 
heard in reality now for much more than a 
year. In spite of his gloomy fears his heart 
was beating at a sad rate and he felt the ex- 
citement of a feeling very far from dread. 

As the time drew near for the train to arrive, 
Matlock paced the platform of the little station 
with renewed nervousness. The Surfport train 
made connection here and was already waiting 
on the other track. He heard the whistle afar 
off among the hills; again he heard it near at 
hand; he saw the dark line creeping around 
the base of a distant elevation, he felt the jar 
of the oncoming train and then it stood pant- 
ing in front of him. 

There was, all at once, quite a little stir and 
confusion about the place which shortly before 
had been so deserted and silent. People got 
on and off; there was something of a crowd upon 
the platform. Then Matlock saw in the midst 
of it a tall form, enveloped in a gray cape-like 
cloak; a pale face which looked straight ahead, 


200 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES* 


and he knew Vendelle. Vendelle was in the 
midst of the group that was moving to the train 
on the opposite side of the station. Bustling 
officials took good care that passengers should 
make no mistake about the necessary change. 
Matlock pushed his way toward Vendelle and 
plucked him by the coat. Without looking 
around, Vendelle gathered the garment about 
him with manifest impatience, and strode on 
faster. Matlock stepped in front of him. 

"Vendelle!” he cried, "come aside here. I 
want to speak to you.” 

Vendelle looked at him, but manifested not 
the le ist surprise. Neither did he vouchsafe 
him any reply. He put out his arm in a lofty 
way, swept him aside, and stepped aboard the 
train. Matlock, trembling with astonishment 
and dismay, followed him. They sat down side 
by side. The train moved away from the sta- 
tion. Vendelle closed his eyes and bent his 
trembling head forward as if he wished to re- 
tire within himself or sleep. Matlock spoke to 
him several times in growing alarm, but Ven- 
delle did not look up. Then Matlock shook 
him slightly to draw his attention. Vendelle 
slowly turned his head toward him and looked 
him attentively in the face. 

" Vendelle ! ” whispered Matlock. He could 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


201 


not speak aloud beneath that look. There was 
neither recognition nor wildness in it. It was 
simply a glance of complete abstraction and 
the man who gave it was shut up in the world 
of his own mind. He did not seem mad, nor 
yet stupefied: simply far away. Matlock was 
none the less terrified. He made another effort 
to reach the understanding of his friend. 

" Vendelle! ” he whispered, sharply, in his 
ear, "won’t you listen to me? I have some- 
thing very serious to say.” 

Mendel I e suddenly turned on him. 

" I am going to Surfport,” he said, and re- 
lapsed into silence. 

" Yendelle,” whispered Matlock, in a frantic 
effort to make him understand, " she is just 
like your wife, — this girl whom you are going 
to see, — she has her face, her very face.” 

Again Vendelle looked at him, and this time 
his countenance wore something of a puzzled 
expression. 

"Yes?” he queried, as a man speaks who 
desires to be civil and has nothing else to 
say. 

" Let us go back,” said Matlock. " You do 
not want to see her: you must not see her. 
She will frighten you.” 

"I am going to Surfport,” said Vendelle, 


202 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


again, as if that simple announcement com- 
prehended everything. 

"You won’t make anything out of him,” 
remarked the conductor at Matlock’s elbow. 
" That is all he knows. I was told to look 
after him by the other conductor at the junc- 
tion. He has been saying that at intervals all 
the afternoon. He seems harmless, poor fel- 
low, but it’s his one idea.” 

A sudden chill fell upon Matlock’s heart. 
He suspected a dreadful calamity. Had Mr. 
Togg’s substitute completed its awful work 
at last? There was just one ray of hope; this 
might he a temporary condition brought on 
by an overdose of the drug which would pass 
away when the system had partially recovered 
its normal state. 

To this hope he clung, hardly decided yet 
what course to pursue, till the train reached 
Surfport. It was already dark and the lamps 
were burning with a yellow radiance that gave 
to the small station an air of distinction. 

The conductor came around promptly to 
see that his charge left the train in safety. 
Yendelle awoke from a state much resembling 
sleep and rose at once. He seemed strong 
and steady on his feet, and spurned the assist- 
ance that was offered him. He stood upon 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


203 


the platform looking about him a little uneasily 
and appeared to vaguely realize that his situa- 
tion had changed. 

Matlock had now made up his mind what to 
do, and drawing Vendelle’s arm through his 
own, led him into the waiting-room. Matlock 
had made the acquaintance of the station mas- 
ter who lived about a stone’s throw up the 
road. He proposed to leave Men del le at this 
man’s house and get Dr. Motley’s advice after 
which he could act with more intelligence. 
Matlock explained that his friend was ill and 
was readily accorded the privilege that he 
desired. Vendelle, still uneasy and seeming 
vaguely to realize, suffered himself without a 
word to be led to the station master’s house 
He sat down in the parlor in a great chair and 
apparently fell asleep. Matlock turned the 
key upon him and leaving an elder son of the 
station agent to guard the door, went in quest 
of the physician. 

He was hurrying along the quiet street when 
he heard behind him steps even more rapid 
than his own. Although the sky was almost 
free of clouds, there was only a hazy star- 
light and he could not see clearly; but there 
was something alarmingly familiar about the 
tall form that sprang past him. The suspicion 


204 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


came to him like a flash that "Vendelle had 
broken through the window and escaped. 
The lethargy might have left him suddenly ; 
it might, indeed, have been only cunningly 
assumed. Matlock broke into a run. The 
man before him was running, too, hut he over- 
took him. It was indeed Vendelle. 

Matlock called out to him and endeavored 
to stop him, but Vendelle did not heed him. 
He was going rapidly in the direction of that 
quiet house beside the road that led to the 
shore. He looked neither to the right nor 
left but kept straight on. 

Matlock was very far from being supersti- 
tious, but this crowning fact in the events of 
the past forty-eight hours, after all the efforts 
he had made to prevent it, was something 
so portentous and fate-like that he suddenly 
felt the weakness of a coward in the presence 
of. a thing that terrifies him. Already he 
heard the cannonade of the surf upon the 
rocks, faint and afar off, and yet so near, — so 
dreadfully near. With a sudden impulse he 
threw his arms around Vendelle and endeav- 
ored to stop him; but whether his strength 
had left him, or because the realization of the 
impotence of all his endeavors reacted upon 
his will, "Vendelle whom he had always re- 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


205 


garded as a weaker man, beat him off as if he 
had been a child, and leaving him prone upon 
the way dashed onward with a wild cry. 

Matlock found to his horror, when he rose, 
that he had hurt his knee against a stone. 
Strive as he might, with all the overwhelming 
sense of the importance of his overtaking and 
distancing Yendelle urging him on, he found 
it impossible to do more than limp painfully 
along. In desperation he looked about him 
for assistance. 

The street was strangely deserted. He 
could not hear the sound of footsteps or of 
wheels anywhere. It would never do to pause 
for any consideration. Might he not hope, with 
reason, that Mendel le did not know the way, 
and even despite the disadvantage which he 
suffered, reach that house to which he feared 
Yendelle was going, before Yendelle did? 

In this hope he pushed resolutely forward. 
He had lost sight of Yendelle in the dark. 
After a time the pain of his injury somewhat 
abated and he went with more rapidity. He 
passed that silent house where the shutters 
were all drawn and the weeds grew about the 
fences, turning his fascinated gaze away from 
its dim proportions and hurried onward still. 
He circled the base of the hill and heard the 


206 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


sudden clamor of the waves and felt the salt 
breath of the ocean directly in his face. And 
there, a little distance down the deserted road 
he saw the tall figure of Vendelle striding on. 
Vendelle had ceased to run and Matlock real- 
ized with joy that he could overtake him. He 
came up, breathless and panting, to his side. 

"Vendelle!” he called, "Vendelle!” 

There was no aaswer. Oblivious of his 
presence, Vendelle strode along. Sick at 
heart, Matlock forbore to offer violence. The 
light of the lantern swinging in the gate 
twinkled out ahead, and close beside it glowed 
the cheerful windows of the great square 
corner room in the lower story. • 

Vendelle reached the gate. He turned in. 
Matlock was close behind him. His grasp 
was on his arm. Vendelle did not ascend the 
steps. Without an instant’s hesitation he 
turned to his right, approached the window 
and looked in. 

Matlock remembered his story of how he 
had done the like on that other night so many 
winters gone. 

Vendelle went close to the window, so that 
his quick breath fell upon the pane. And, 
behold a miracle! — the old man sitting at one 
side of the fireplace, looking straight ahead, 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


207 


lost in reverie, and in the great arm-chair, 
turned partly toward him, the second Lily of 
the Valley, her head drooping on one side, 
like a flower on its stem, with parted lips, 
asleep, — the same face; the same form; the 
Very scene! And time was mocked. Eighteen 
years were as nothing; all that had been since 
that night shrivelled up in emptiness. 

A wild shriek rose on the air, and there were 
two figures speeding down the lonely road to 
the sea, — the tall one far ahead, — the lame 
and limping one falling far behind. Louder 
and louder grew the sound. The waves thun- 
dered like giants. The air was full of it, — 
nothing else but that vast noise. The moon, 
barred with a single stripe of gray, shone out 
beyond the great barren rock that arose above 
the level of the rest at the foot of the road. 
The limping figure whose feeble voice was 
like silence itself beside that awful cannonade, 
stopped short and shut its eyes. Against that 
shining light in the sky, like a silhouette, dis- 
tinct and plain, arose a tall, gaunt form, hat- 
less, the wind fluttering the garment about its 
shoulders: the arms went up and waved too 
and fro, as if they appealed to the far-off dark 
and silent heaven, — the form moved forward, 
downward quickly, and the rock was clear. 


208 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


CHAPTER XX. 

THE KISS OE LOVE. 

T HE undercurent was strong and subtle 
beneath the overhanging ledge of table 
rock. The face and form of Philip Xendelle 
were never seen again. Matlock lingered awhile 
at SurfpoVt, in the melancholy expectation that 
the ocean would yield up its prey, but the ice 
ground along the rocks day after day and noth- 
ing came. Then Matlock was obliged to go 
away. 

He came again in the spring and lingered 
still longer. The more he yielded himself to 
the enchantment that was woven around him 
here, the less capable of manly self-repression, 
the weaker he became. But a departure could 
not be always deferred and the time approached 
when he must go. Then the Lily called him 
for a last walk upon the beach. 

" I know you have felt very bad about your 
friend, and that it is a longtime since you have 
been there,” she said, holding his hand and 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


209 


looking into his face persuasively. " But you 
are going now and you may never come again. 
Won’t you come? ” 

He yielded, and she led him forth and down 
upon the rocks where he had not been, even 
in fancy, for months without a shudder. But 
there was a spell in her dainty presence. The 
day was a glory. The creamy surf swelled 
among the rocks and the sun shone in the un- 
tainted heaven; the gleaming gulls circled 
over their heads ; the shore birds ran and 
wheeled about their path. And Matlock found 
no dread, no shudder possible, for the winter 
had passed away and the things that were were 
so much more potent than the things that had 
been. 

Then she said looking at him wistfully : 

" You are going away? ” 

And he answered with averted face: 

" To-morrow. I must.” 

"There is something,” she began, a little 
diffidently, keeping at his side, " that I have 
wanted to say to you. I thought, perhaps, 
that you would speak of it and make it easy 
for me, but you never have.” 

" You cannot fear to offend me,” said Mat- 
lock, with reproach. 

"Ho. I will say it. They tell me that I 

14 


210 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


look sometimes like a girl who died before I 
came into the world.” 

Matlock started. ISTo; he had never talked 
of this with her. 

" Willard, did you know her? ” 

" A saintly woman,” said Matlock. "I did 
know her.” 

The Lily went on, wistfully: "I am afraid 
you will not nnswer me, or that you will not 
tell me the truth. You will fear to tell me 
the truth.” 

" I will try to speak the truth,” said Mat- 
lock, uneasily. 

"Were you fond of her, Willard?” 

He became confused. 

" I was afraid you would not like to answer,” 
she continued, looking with sad earnestness 
into his face. 

"Yes; I will answer you,” said Matlock 
resolutely, " if I can, truly. I was only a boy 
and she was, — well, my romance. I fancied, 
— only a boy’s fancy, you understand, — that 
I loved her.” 

She drew a deep breath. 

" And am I much like her? ” 

" When you are grave or sad. When 
you smile and are gay the resemblance van- 
ishes.” 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LIEIES. 


211 


" Then I will always try to be grave.” She 
said, very softly. 

"No, no,” Matlock said, quickly. "I would 
rather you were yourself, as God made you, 
with the smile upon your lips.” 

" Oh ! ” she murmured, " I thought so,” 
and looked away from him out across the 
shining sea. " You loved this other girl, 
Willard,” she continued, mournfully, "you 
love her still, and love is something deeper 
than a face.” 

" Stop,” cried Matlock, with dry lips. "You 
will force me to say something which will be 
my everlasting shame.” 

She looked at him with a sudden gleam in 
her blue eyes and a soft flush in her cheek. 

" Then let us both confess what is in our 
hearts, Willard, — to our mutual shame.” 

Matlock was no longer master of himself. 
What he would have said his hot lips refused 
to utter, but he put his arm suddenly about 
her neck and looked full into her eyes. And 
in that look overflowed the pent-up passion of 
half a lifetime. The flush overspread her 
whole face and she cried out, as if answering 
an avowal that he had made. 

"And I, Willard, I adore you!” 

She threw herself into his arms, like the 


212 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


child of nature that she was. The time 
had come when they must understand each 
other. 

" Think of the years that separate us,” mur- 
mured Matlock. 

" How can you say that, when I see you 
beside me now, young and strong? "Would 
you have me love a boy? 

He looked into her face, and trembled as he 
looked. 

” Lilian,” he said. ” Oh, Lilian, I never 
dreamed of this. You did not let me see 
it.” 

” You were blind, Willard,” she answered, 
"because I tried, oh, I tried so hard! ” She 
began to cry joyfully and quietly, hiding her 
face that he might not see what a baby she 
was. 

w Once in this very place,” she murmured, 
dashing away her tears, " you scolded me 
because — because — ” 

" I know what you would say,” said Mat- 
lock. " Oh, my Lilian, did you love me 
then? ” 

"I don’t know,” replied the Lily, bashfully. 
" Hot as I do now, — I am very sure of that. 
I don’t know; I think I must be very bold, 
and not quite modest, and not enough decep- 


THE ROMANCE OF THE LILIES. 


213 


tive. I never could, I never, never could, 
look upon that little kiss as a sin. And yet, 
Willard, I thought — do .you want me to tell 
you what I thought?” 

" Everything,” he murmured. 

" I thought,” she said tremblingly, " that it 
was because of that kiss that you had deter- 
mined not to love me. I wrote to father about 
his friend’s son what I did just to try you— ^ 
to make you jealous — to — ” 

"Don’t!” interposed Matlock. "I have 
been a fool. Since the day when you gave me 
that innocent kiss we both have changed — 
much.” 

They gazed into each other’s eyes ; their faces 
drew together; their eager lips met and clung. 
And in that moment that mysterious clinging 
together of two souls, that only true marriage, 
— not the hollow word signifying the accoutre- 
ments but the sublime word meaning the 
essence, — that grand mystery as deep as the 
mystery that underlies and vivifies this uni- 
verse, was begun. Not afterwards when the 
gentleman in the black gown uttered a few 
words and a ring was passed, but then and 
there upon the rocks of Surfport where they 
had met. 

Matlock was right. There had been a change 


214 


THE ROMANCE OP THE LILIES. 


as wide as the distance that separates the kiss 
of innocence from the kiss of love. 


I will not answer fci the whole truth of the 
statement, but it is related by those who 
ought to know, and it is certainly believed by 
many, that from this day forth the second 
Lily of the "Valley grew to look less and less 
like the human flower which had blossomed 
upon this soil before her; that as -the kisses 
came, and the smiles multiplied and the dim- 
ples grew deeper, and the blue eyes laughed 
more often, day by day the miracle became 
less and less until in time it faded quite away. 




Two Strokes of the Bell.” 


{< 


THE VERDICT OF THE PRESS. 

“It is a strong story, with a dramatic and ingenious plot.” — New York Sun. 

“ It is a well-written story, abounding in strong characters.” — Washington 
Critic. 

“ The novel is as wild and original as one of Poe's tales, and it holds the 
reader from first to last.” — Hartford Times. 

“A remarkable work.” — Boston Traveller. 

“ The plot of the story is original. It is a powerful tale.” — San Francisco 
Post. 

“ A story of great dramatic power, wrought out with thrilling effective- 
ness.” — Baltimore News. 

“ It is a story of absorbing interest, consistent in plot, dramatic in develop- 
ment.” — Philadelphia Call. 

“ Mr. Montague knows how to tell a story of absorbing interest without 
rant or sacrifice of proportion.” — Albany Journal . 

“ In point of holding the interest to the end, one would think he was read- 
ing a novel by Anna Catherine Greene or Gaboriau.” — Boston Sunday Times . 

“ It is especially adapted to the needs of the travelling public.” — Washing- 
ton Post. 

“ It cannot fail to interest and instruct, and to find a prominent place in the 
literature of the time.” — Boston Gazette. 

“ It is a strongly written story which will chain the reader's interest and 
excite his curiosity to the climax.” — Philadelphia Sunday Mercury. 

“ It is, like a cherry, to be taken at one bite, — a book which will make an 
hour on the cars or in a depot, or any hour which one fears will prove long, 
very short indeed.” — Salem Gazette. 

“ The plot is cleverly managed, and the author has a keen appreciation of 
dramatic situations.” — Boston Transcript. 

“ It is a powerful story of love, folly and suffering, and the reader's atten- 
tion is chained until the climax at the end of the book is reached.” — Albany 
Press. 

“ An intensely interesting, powerful and dramatic story.” — Boston Globe. 

“ The story is one of interest, remarkable for the strangeness and vigor of 
its conception, and developed with no small degree of skill.” — San Francisco 
Argonaut. 

“ It claims considerations on higher grounds as unfolding deeper and more 
complex phases of human life than is customary to such novels.” — Lowell 
Times. 

“ Mr. Montague's work is highly creditable and successful.” — Boston Herald. 1 

















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